In term 1 you will study Serious Play (60 credits). This unit is designed to expand thinking about and exposure to a wide range of creative practices and their contextual, aesthetic, historical, social, cultural and critical relevance. You will be quickly prototyping ideas and getting feedback from your cohort, tutors as well as documenting your self-reflection. You will attend the Animation Autumn Symposium where you will present a poster. There will be an emphasis on experimentation, and inventive approaches to form and concept.

In term 2 you will study Development and Exploration (45 credits). This unit will consolidate the skills and ideas you have developed in term 1 and synthesise them into viable exploration and planning for a sustained animated work which you will be working on for the remainder of this programme. You will summarise your practice and process through iterative material experimentation. Alongside your practice you will be analysing your ideas through research and using this to articulate how your lineage of practice informs your work.

This unit will be delivered alongside a College-wide Elective(15 credits) chosen from a selection available across the College. These electives are designed to enable you to work alongside peers from other programmes on cross-disciplinary challenges.

In term 3 you will engage in Independent Research Planning(60 credits). This unit serves the development of the sustained practice of your main body of work through discussion and collaboration. You will refine your idea, make an animatic or other structure that communicates the project you wish to make, create or collaborate on audio, and iteratively assemble proofs of concept in the technique you are going to use for your final MFA project.

You will also critically situate your work in anticipation of presenting a paper next term and you will develop a conceptual position that you will defend at the Animation Autumn Symposium. In conjunction with tutors at the RCA and staff at Aardman you will plan an outline of your production plan for next year to be delivered at the start of the next term.

Your second year consists of two terms of study in residence at Aardman Academy in Bristol.

This residency consists of two units: Animation Professional Residency One (60 credits) and Two (60 credits). These units are the culmination of your final project and where you will put into action the plans you have made for your conceptual, critical and practice based project.

In term 4 you will agree a production schedule for your MFA Final Project with Aardman Academy production staff, and go into full production with your MFA audio-visual animated project. You will continue to articulate your practical work in relation to research. You will critically and conceptually position your work, in relation to a field of practice and research, at the Animation Autumn Symposium in London, where you will present these ideas to tutors and peers for presentation and discussion.

In term 5, your final term, you will complete your final MFA Project, produced to an advanced standard in the professional context of Aardman Academy. This will be a finished animated project, ready for public screening, along with a distribution plan.