Animation at the Victorian College of the Arts has a longstanding, world-class reputation. Our graduates light up animated screens around the world.

The Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation) involves the practical exploration, innovation and development of animated screen production. It incorporates research, idea development, screenwriting, storyboarding, character design and expression through intensive studio-based learning. It also covers a comprehensive range of animation art, craft and technical production methods, styles and outcomes.

You will have access to professional facilities and resources, including animation and stop-motion studios; rushes viewing rooms; editing, sound recording and mixing suites; 90 and 220-seat cinemas; professional production equipment; and HD digital vision and audio post-production facilities.

Animation methods include paint on glass, charcoal, sand, ink, 2D and 3D digital, stop-motion, pixilation, rotoscoping, visual effects and motion graphics, experimental film techniques, projection art and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Breadth subjects at each year level enable you to explore cross disciplinary studies from the wider University community, accessing multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills that will build on existing knowledge or present opportunities for you to investigate and develop new interests.

You will

• Develop advanced knowledge and skills in seeing an animation production through all stages of development, production and post production
• Develop your individual creative voice and animation style
• Collaborate with related disciplines to plan and execute an interdisciplinary project with animation
• In every year level, produce an animated short film that is completely your own – written, directed, animated, sound-designed and edited by you.

Honours is available for this course

The Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation) provides an immersive and experiential education, focusing on the origination and development of animated projects for a wide range of screen contexts and audiences. There is a strong emphasis on developing your individual creative voice and experimentation while underlining the need to reach effectively and freshly to an audience.

The unique studio-based study environment enables individualistic learning as well as engagement and collaboration with students in other screen-based specialisations within Film and Television, as well as creative interdisciplinary collaborations with students across Performing Arts, Music, Visual Art, Design and Production.

In the first year of the course, you will undertake foundation exercises in animation research, techniques, experimentation, writing and storyboarding, sound, and project planning.

In year two, creative and technical skills are applied to character creation, world building, sound production and application of animation to expanded screen contexts.

In the final year, you will undertake studies in projects for collaborative and community practice, projection arts and animation production enterprise. In each year you will create an animated short film that you will write, direct, edit and animate, thereby developing a body of work that demonstrates a continued practice across all stages of animation production culminating in a capstone experience third year.

Your breadth studies

As part of your course at each year level, you can select breadth subjects either from the Fine Arts and Music disciplines or explore cross disciplinary studies from the wider University community, accessing multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills that will build on existing knowledge or present opportunities for you to investigate and develop new interests.

The breadth subjects available to commencing BFA students include those in fine arts (acting, animation, dance, production, film and television, music theatre, screenwriting, theatre and visual art), as well as music education, Indigenous knowledges, law, languages, psychology, social sciences, humanities, science, marketing and many more.

Find out more about the University’s breadth subjects

Workload

Typically, you will study across four workdays with 20 formal contact hours and 20 hours of unsupervised studio time per week.

Sample course plan

View some sample course plans to help you select subjects that will meet the requirements for this bachelor.

300-point program

3 years full-time

Bachelor of Fine Arts (Animation) graduates will complete a deeply personal, artistically transformational, and highly professional course of development. With their creative, collaborative and technical skills they are optimally placed to make significant impact in the national and international creative industries.

Our graduates establish careers as animation artists for art and entertainment industries, including:

• Film
• Television
• Community arts
• Site-specific screening installations
• Information and advertising
• Games
• Motion graphics
• New developments in media and exhibition
• Storyboard artist
• Screenwriter for animation

Once you've completed your undergraduate degree, you can go on to gain employment or begin a graduate degree and work towards a professional qualification such as law, engineering or medicine. Or you could join our graduate research community and contribute to our world-changing research.

Your graduate degree will be internationally recognised, and set you apart from those who study a traditional Australian single or double degree.

Explore the graduate pathways available once you complete your undergraduate degree here.

Completed secondary education recently (within the past two years); Completed some or all of a higher education qualification; Completed some or all of a VET qualification; Applicants with wo

TOEFL Internet-based test: total score of at least 79 and scores of 21 for writing, 18 for speaking, 13 for reading and 13 for listening; IELTS: total score of at least 6.5 in the Academic International English Language Testing System (IELTS), with no bands less than 6.0; Pearson Test of English Academic : overall score of at least 58 and no PTE communicative skills score below 50; Cambridge English, Advanced/Certificate in Advanced English (CAE): Cambridge English Score of at least 176 with no skill below 169; C2 Proficiency (previously called Cambridge English: Proficiency (CPE) examination): Cambridge English Score of at least 180 with no skill below 180.