Portfolio advice for undergraduate School of Games & Creative Technology applicants

Portfolio Requirements

These portfolio requirements are for the following courses: 

• Comic and Concept Art BA (Hons)
• Games Animation BA (Hons)
• Games Arts BA (Hons)
• Games Design BA (Hons)
• Games Development BSc (Hons)
• Studio Practice (Games) BA (Hons)

These degree courses focus on fundamental, traditional art skills and contemporary digital techniques. Your portfolio should show us that you have the underlying skills to fulfil the demands of the course as well as demonstrating your creativity and passion for this subject area. 

Your portfolio should provide an insight into your work ethic, enthusiasm and skills as an artist. The following guidance outlines what we’d like to see in your portfolio: 

• Personal work: This can take many forms and can be produced with traditional or digital media. It should demonstrate a range of art techniques such as drawing/painting from life, the human form, rural or urban landscape and still life, or be invented characters, creatures, environments. Include up to 10 pieces. 
• Sketchbook work: We’d like to see traditional media sketchbook work that shows a mixture of observational drawing from life and personal idea generation. They should be produced with controlled, clear, pen and pencil work as well as some colour and use of other drawing media. Sketchbooks are your place for quickly capturing poses/scenes, trying out ideas, experimentation, so we don’t expect highly finished work. Include 10 sketchbook images (double pages). 
• Current relevant coursework: We’d like to see any assignments you have which are relevant to the course, so illustrative and/or drawing based. We don’t need to see assignments relating to photography, graphic design, typography, etc. You should show all stages of a project: your research, idea development though to final artwork. Include your 2 best projects. 
• If you scan or render your work, it should be at a good quality (200dpi). 

The quality of work in a portfolio is more important than the quantity. 

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.