Portfolio advice for BA Animation applicants

Portfolio Requirements

For the BA (Hons) Animation degree we’re looking for 12 to 20 examples of your current work that showcases your level and range of achievements.  

Your portfolio of work should demonstrate your experience, interests, aspirations, and passion for animation, and contain all or most of the following: 

• Strong evidence of drawing skills through both life drawing and original (not copied from photos or illustrations) observational drawing. The drawing should evidence competency with a range of mark materials 
• Personal idea and image generation work in sketchbooks 
• Evidence of animation and storyboards if possible. Animation should be saved as an MP4 file 
• Evidence of a strong interest in animation and knowledge of this course. 
• Selected evidence of your recent course work and any other materials which you believe would support your application. 

You’ll also need to show evidence of research and critical writing, and a written commentary about your portfolio that talks about the ideas within it. 

You'll be invited to share your work with the course team at an Applicant Day. Our Admissions Team will invite you to book your place at one of our Applicant Days after you have applied. 

Use of AI 

Your portfolio must contain your own work. We understand that some of your portfolio may include work created in part or whole by AI. You must acknowledge this by adding ‘AI generated’ to the relevant section(s), stating how you used AI to create images, and adding a link to the original image with the date it was created (where possible). 

Integrated Foundation Year  Applicants

If your course includes an integrated foundation year then you'll be developing your portfolio during your first year of study. Therefore, we're not expecting to see a fully finalised portfolio from you at this stage.  

We would, however, like to see your sketchbooks or projects you've worked on in school or college, to get a sense of your creative interests.