Overview
The UK's animation and visual effects (VFX) industry leads the world in producing blockbuster visuals for entertainment media, reinventing their technical and creative capabilities. With indie talent also thriving in the South Coast, there’s no better place to start your visual effects career than at Portsmouth.
Our Computer Animation and Visual Effects degree course will help you build skills in key areas such as concept drawing, 3D animation, physics-based simulation, and compositing, with guidance from a team of industry experts from across the entertainment and advertising sectors. Using our spectacular facilities, software and equipment, you'll enhance your artistic and technical expertise and improve your research skills in the technology you'll work with, which is vital to your development as an all-round artist.
You can also specialise and develop your professional portfolio through placement opportunities, client projects and the modules you’ll choose from second year.
Transform yourself into an exceptional VFX artist, producer, animator, and stagecrafter at Portsmouth – ready to take the creative and communication industries by storm.
Course Highlights
On this Computer Animation and Visual Effects degree course you’ll:
- Maximise your creativity and learning by using world-class facilities like our Motion Capture Studio and Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality – housing the most advanced cinematic-standard equipment and virtual production suites of any university
- Familiarise yourself with professional software used in the industry, including NUKEX, Maya, 3DS Max, ZBrush, Houdini, Katana and Mari
- Learn from a team of experts who are industry leaders across various entertainment and communication sectors, including film, animation, advertising and computer games
- Collaborate with other students on other courses by getting involved in our annual University GameJam
- Gain valuable industry experience by taking an optional placement
- Take advantage of our strong industry links to build professional contacts, such as attending guest speaker lectures and the chance to win sponsored prizes for your final year project
- Improve your language skills by studying a foreign language as part of the Institute-Wide Language Programme (IWLP)
Careers and opportunities
The computer animation and VFX industry continues to grow as volume demand increases and increasingly complex effects require innovations in technologies and workflows. The sector’s unique fusion of art (in its traditional and modern forms and techniques) and science (via the advanced hardware and software used) offers fascinating career, research, and education enhancement opportunities for graduates.
London is home to six of the world's largest award-winning visual effects companies, many of whom we have strong industry connections with, and independent effects studios are emerging in the south east of England. Our Master's degrees in Creative Technologies and Computer Animation are natural progressions for graduates who wish to research more into the science behind their skills.
Graduate roles
Many of our graduates have worked in roles such as:
- Serial riggers
- Animators
- Motion capture technicians
- Stagecrafter
- Freelance artists
Graduate destinations
Many of our graduates have gone on to work at either the University of Portsmouth or multi-award-winning special effects companies behind some of the biggest film and television franchises in the world. These include:
- Industrial Light & Magic (The Mandalorian, The Irishman, Black Panther)
- Moving Picture Company (1917, The Lion King)
- Double Negative (DNEG) (Tenet, Chernobyl, Blade Runner 2049, Black Mirror, Ex Machina)
- Milk VFX (Ex Machina, Doctor Who, Sherlock)
- Framestore (Blade Runner 2049, The Midnight Sky, Guardians of the Galaxy 2: Marvel)
