Animation (MA)

In our dramatically changing world, animation has a special position as a pervasive, and persuasive, artistic visual communication form that reaches beyond borders and across cultures. Our graduates deal creatively and sensitively with contemporary issues across a range of technologies and platforms. Their practice animates material-based textures of painting, drawing, illustration, embroidery, puppetry and sculpture or uses digital tools and processes, more often than not in combination.. Many students this year explored analog materiality, after the previous year of working digitally. Explorations across pathways is encouraged and you will see how their works run the gamut of film genres and styles, between mimetic narrative to playful abstraction, underpinned by compelling sound design.

Conceptual thematics this year are affected by the psychological aftershocks of the pandemic and include explorations of the self or the psyche and mind / body /environment relationships, families and longing, existentialism and the absurd, cultural nostalgia, historical and futuristic paradigms of how we live now and speculation on what may lie ahead. These are balanced by cheerful, hopeful narratives, subjective poetic reverie, tender and witty observations of the everyday, celebrations of cultural difference and identity politics. Documentaries sensitively explore personal experience, the liminalities of myth and truth, or employ oral witness to critique local knife crime as a symptom of gentrification.

The RCA Show presents our graduates’ latest works with compelling content ranging from personal to political, expressed through confident and imaginative artistic research, processes and experimentation. We welcome you to enter the unique aesthetic experiences of the imaginative worlds transmuted onto screens through their creative visions and artistic practice.

You'll see how our students deal imaginatively and sensitively with contemporary themes using manifold technologies, screen platforms and artistic media. In their creative processes, they animate material-based textures of painting, drawing, illustration, puppetry and sculpture, digital tools or mixed media. Techniques and genres run a gamut of mimetic narrative, playful abstraction, expanded documentary methods, VR and installation.The works on display attest to our students’ abilities in overcoming constraints and finding solutions to interrogate and challenge local and global situations creatively and imaginatively through their art form.

The act of making work frame by frame is always contradictory: simultaneously playful and serious. Ephemeral and enduring static images trick our brains into seeing lyrical movement. An opportunity to allow insights and fresh air into the students’ concept development and methodological processes, this WiP gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the iterative process of animation and allows ideas to be aired and shared. We welcome you to enter the unique aesthetic and emotional experiences of the imaginative 'worlds-in-progress' communicated through their creative visions.

Twitter: @rcaanimation

Instagram: @rcaanimation

Study Animation at the RCA: www.rca.ac.uk/animation