Digital Arts with a Year in Industry BA
With this degree, you can go in many creative directions.
I was looking at a whole bunch of courses and Kent stood out because of the course which seemed modern and very broad in its scope. I also liked the location and the fact that it was a campus university.
You learn different skills and it was a good transition between school and university. It didn’t throw you in at the deep end, but you couldn’t sit back and relax either – you had to learn how to work independently. In the first year, we covered film, graphic design, 3D and photography. Most of the assessments were project-based and it was very hands-on right from the start. For our film module, we were taught by a professional camerawoman. She’d assign each of us a different role – one student would be director, another was doing camera work, another audio. Then we had to shoot short films in class and she’d give us feedback. I really loved that module!
Each year, the expectations get higher but the quality of your work goes up as well. So in the first year we had to create a website and in the second year we also had to create a website, but the quality we were expected to achieve was completely different. And somehow you manage to pull it off. Film is my favourite area of study and 3D animation is good – I find some of it challenging but I enjoy it a lot. The good thing about the course is that it’s both arty and technical and everyone finds something they excel at – you find out where your strengths are.
The labs are open 22/7 and we have a social area too, so you can chat to people about your work. It’s important for the labs to be open all the time – often you don’t have the resources to study at home because of the software we use. Most people don’t have a computer powerful enough to deal with it at home.
Yes, I went to GForces. They do web solutions and local TV advertising for the car industry. The company works quite closely with Kent and often takes our students as interns. I worked in the media team; we created video content for the websites. And then, because I was interested in working on bigger projects, my boss put me in charge of TV adverts. I did scripting, casting, storyboarding, location permits, budgeting and assistant directing. Occasionally I’d get to do the editing too. I loved it! I got to meet a lot of people and it was great fun.
The year in industry made a massive difference. It helped me to decide what I wanted to do, so I came back with a goal in mind. And having a job, makes you more effective in your time management – I’m more determined now and my studies are going better than ever.
For my final year project I’m planning to create a 3D character, superimposed into real-life footage. In the film industry they do this a lot: I want to show that I can come up with a unique character and that I have the technical skills to make it look cinematic. The thing I like about animation is that it’s your own vision. You can create characters in your head and bring them to life. It can take weeks to save out your whole project, so you have to plan ahead. The software has to calculate everything that’s happening in the environment, and that takes a lot of computer time.
With this degree, you can go in many creative directions. I’d like to direct in the film, TV or advertising industries. That’s the area I’m interested in and I’m planning to study that at Master’s level. After that, I’d hope to get a job that’s interesting and moving in the right direction: in these industries, it’s all about stepping stones.
In your first year, work hard enough to get decent grades without getting stressed. Based on that, you’ll get a good sense of what you can achieve
