What&#x27;s it like to study Concept Art at Staffordshire University? Q&amp;A

OP

Original post by YatoSan

I can't decide between whether or not I'd like to be a concept artist or storyboard artist! Does the course offer enough free time to allow you to work on personal projects too?

Also, do they actually teach you enough so that your work can reach a professional level, or would people also have to take online courses too, to supplement what they learn if it's only the basics?

Hiya Yatosan!
So, I think it is a mix. Generally, you have about 3 hours of lectures/class time per module a week which results in around 12 in person hours. After that, your time management is up to you! You will have set work to do by yourself each week as well as a general expectation for the year but I would say there is still time to work on your own projects. Closer to the end of the year it does get a lot more difficult though!

And I believe that it does teach you enough to work professionally! Throughout the year, you are taught all of the skills you need for character and environment design as well as at the end of your course being taught professional skills and about how to get a job in the games industry. Like with your grades, it does depend on the effort and time you put into improving your work and acting on feedback given by your lecturers. I definitely saw an improvement in my art just this year so I am excited to see how it ends up after I graduate! If you're still looking to improve at the end of the year, I believe they're starting doing a Masters course in Concept Art this year too!

Hopefully this can help! I think the skills you need for storyboarding definitely can be gained from the concept art course as there is a lot of time learning and emphasising the art fundamentals as well as advanced art but it is a tough choice. Good luck with choosing which path to take and wherever you end up! If there's any other questions, don't hesitate to ask :smile:

Rhys
(He/Him)

Reply 3

YatoSan

14

Original post by RhysReyn- Staffs Uni Student Ambassador

Hiya Yatosan!
So, I think it is a mix. Generally, you have about 3 hours of lectures/class time per module a week which results in around 12 in person hours. After that, your time management is up to you! You will have set work to do by yourself each week as well as a general expectation for the year but I would say there is still time to work on your own projects. Closer to the end of the year it does get a lot more difficult though!

And I believe that it does teach you enough to work professionally! Throughout the year, you are taught all of the skills you need for character and environment design as well as at the end of your course being taught professional skills and about how to get a job in the games industry. Like with your grades, it does depend on the effort and time you put into improving your work and acting on feedback given by your lecturers. I definitely saw an improvement in my art just this year so I am excited to see how it ends up after I graduate! If you're still looking to improve at the end of the year, I believe they're starting doing a Masters course in Concept Art this year too!

Hopefully this can help! I think the skills you need for storyboarding definitely can be gained from the concept art course as there is a lot of time learning and emphasising the art fundamentals as well as advanced art but it is a tough choice. Good luck with choosing which path to take and wherever you end up! If there's any other questions, don't hesitate to ask :smile:

Rhys
(He/Him)

Oh wow that sounds great, thank you for going into so much detail!

Is there a lot of group work or do you also get to work on projects independently?
Oh and is it common for students to find internships or work experience?

Reply 4

OP

Original post by YatoSan

Oh wow that sounds great, thank you for going into so much detail!

Is there a lot of group work or do you also get to work on projects independently?
Oh and is it common for students to find internships or work experience?

Hi again!

So you mainly work independently but get to discuss your work and things with other students and lecturers in sort of mini crits. In the second year and I believe in third year too if you would like you do either a VFX collab with CGI students or you do a Games Design Collab module with other Game based courses to create either a CGI scene or a vertical slice of a game.

As for work experience, there is the chance to do a year working industry but this is something you have to arrange yourself and find an oppurtunity. The university does offer support as well as helping advertise any oppurtunities they come across. As for internships, I know some people who have gotten them before university but I'm not entirely sure how easy it is whilst studying. At the very least the university offers careers weeks and events which allow you to hear from and speak to someone in the industry which I myself found quite helpful and fun!

Rhys
(He/Him)

Reply 5

YatoSan

14

Original post by RhysReyn- Staffs Uni Student Ambassador

Hi again!

So you mainly work independently but get to discuss your work and things with other students and lecturers in sort of mini crits. In the second year and I believe in third year too if you would like you do either a VFX collab with CGI students or you do a Games Design Collab module with other Game based courses to create either a CGI scene or a vertical slice of a game.

As for work experience, there is the chance to do a year working industry but this is something you have to arrange yourself and find an oppurtunity. The university does offer support as well as helping advertise any oppurtunities they come across. As for internships, I know some people who have gotten them before university but I'm not entirely sure how easy it is whilst studying. At the very least the university offers careers weeks and events which allow you to hear from and speak to someone in the industry which I myself found quite helpful and fun!

Rhys
(He/Him)

Sorry for the late response, thank you for all the info! This sounds really good :biggrin:

Reply 6

dantronix

1

Hi can you tell us what equipment / books / etc is provided by the uni for the course and what items we should consider buying ahead of time (for our daughter) we cant seem to find a list anywhere :/Thankyou.Dan

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 7

OP

Original post by dantronix

Hi can you tell us what equipment / books / etc is provided by the uni for the course and what items we should consider buying ahead of time (for our daughter) we cant seem to find a list anywhere :/Thankyou.Dan

Hi Dan,

Course wise there’s lots of resources available from the library and in the computer rooms, such as computers, drawing software and graphics tablets. It may be worth making sure she has a computer or laptop and a graphic tablet if she wants to work from home but it’s definitely not required! I believe lectures will be mostly in person from now so they are usually done in a room with computers so. It can be helpful to bring/get a Wacom tablet pen to use in the computer rooms out of class but those are also available to borrow from the student resources. She will need art materials for the Life Drawing Module. To start with that’s mainly a pencil set and sketchbook and as the year goes on she will need other materials such as charcoal and paint. Our teacher Ian will always give advanced notice of the materials we need so there will be time in between. There is also an art shop on campus that she can get anything she needs if desperate. As for books, there’s no books specifically needed but there are some suggested! I really recommend James Gurney’s Colour and Light as well as How to Draw by Scott Robertson. They can be very helpful for most modules. There are lots of books in the library that can also be accessed online too!

I hope this can be helpful and if there’s any other questions please let me know! I hope your daughter has a great time here!

- Rhys (He/Him)

Reply 8

dantronix

1

Thats great , thankyou for the quick reply I will relay the information to her , and let her know about this forum in case she needs more help . Thanks again :smile:

Dan

Reply 9

krco

7

Hi Rhys! I just received my conditional offer for Concept Art with a foundation year 3 days ago and I'm stoked about it! I was wondering, is the course 100% practical or are there gonna be written exams/essays/etc. too? And what's the campus like? I'm an international student so I can't really attend the open days myself so I don't really know what the campus is actually like;; Oh! And is it possible to view student work? :0c I can't seem to find em on the uni's website but it'd be great to check em out!

Thank you so much :biggrin:

Reply 10

OP

Original post by krco

Hi Rhys! I just received my conditional offer for Concept Art with a foundation year 3 days ago and I'm stoked about it! I was wondering, is the course 100% practical or are there gonna be written exams/essays/etc. too? And what's the campus like? I'm an international student so I can't really attend the open days myself so I don't really know what the campus is actually like;; Oh! And is it possible to view student work? :0c I can't seem to find em on the uni's website but it'd be great to check em out!

Thank you so much :biggrin:

Hi Krco!

To answer your questions, firstly the Concept Art course is mostly practical work. A majority of your time will be completing work set during class time or as a homework. There's still a few writing based aspects too, like still having proper lectures, writing forum posts explaining your work as well as doing presentations about you work! Definitely no written exams and currently I believe there are no essays as the dissertation in your final year has been removed. As for the Campus, I really like it! All of our modules are in 1-2 buildings so it's easy to find classrooms and there are usually classrooms open every day to do work in too if you don't want to work from home. There's also several different shops and coffee shops nearby, some of which are ran by the union! The campus is also no more than 10 minutes away from any of the Student Accommodation.

As for Student Work, I can send you the Games and VFX student reel from 2021 here -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYVMJW5LWyo
As well as this, I really recommend following our course leader Anthony Martin on Instagram! He often will share current and previous student's work as well as different lecturers work on his story! This might be helpful if you want to see some new and current work. My own account is also RhysReyn which will give you an example of the sort of work we do in First Year and Second Year!

I hope all of this information is really helpful and if there's anything else you would like to know don't hesitate to reply on here and I will reply as soon as I can!

Thanks,

Rhys
(He/Him)

Reply 11

p_u_p

Hi, i dont know if youre still looking at this thread but im having real hard time deciding between staffs concept art course or the NUA one, they both look really good and i just cant choose, i was wondering if you had to decide between these two and which you prefer. Thankyou :smile:

Reply 12

OP

Original post by p_u_p

Hi, i dont know if youre still looking at this thread but im having real hard time deciding between staffs concept art course or the NUA one, they both look really good and i just cant choose, i was wondering if you had to decide between these two and which you prefer. Thankyou :smile:

Hi P_u_P! Hopefully I can help with some advice as I was in the exact same scenario when picking my course as I also looked at NUA and Staffordshire University. For me, I chose Staffs over NUA because the concept art side of the course was a lot more specific. When I looked at NUA I believe they said that there were multiple modules later on that focused on other game design aspects like Game Dev and in depth 3D modelling in comparison to Staffs where you can choose to do modules on game design or CGI. As well, I felt Staffs had better resources for concept art students and that I'd find more people like me as there were a lot of different games courses and people at the Universtity. However! If doing more games focused work and wanting to try doing things like Game Dev interests you NUA could be a good option too! If you read through this thread, I've summed up a lot about the course on here! It might also be good at comparing other things like the location, accommodation or socieities to see which ones would work best for you or interest you more if you can't decide between the two courses. I felt that both courses were very good so whichever one you choose you should have a great time! I hope this can help making the decision easier for you :smile:

Thanks!

Rhys He/Him

Reply 13

p_u_p

Original post by RhysReyn- Staffs Uni Student Ambassador

Hi P_u_P! Hopefully I can help with some advice as I was in the exact same scenario when picking my course as I also looked at NUA and Staffordshire University. For me, I chose Staffs over NUA because the concept art side of the course was a lot more specific. When I looked at NUA I believe they said that there were multiple modules later on that focused on other game design aspects like Game Dev and in depth 3D modelling in comparison to Staffs where you can choose to do modules on game design or CGI. As well, I felt Staffs had better resources for concept art students and that I'd find more people like me as there were a lot of different games courses and people at the Universtity. However! If doing more games focused work and wanting to try doing things like Game Dev interests you NUA could be a good option too! If you read through this thread, I've summed up a lot about the course on here! It might also be good at comparing other things like the location, accommodation or socieities to see which ones would work best for you or interest you more if you can't decide between the two courses. I felt that both courses were very good so whichever one you choose you should have a great time! I hope this can help making the decision easier for you :smile:

Thanks!

Rhys He/Him

Thanks!! This helped, I did notice that staffs was a lot more specific and its literally only down to the courses at this point, the only reason im kinda leaning towards NUA is because its so pretty lol. But yeah I did like the look of the staffs course because they explained it a lot better ! Thankyou again for your reply c:

Reply 14

kurocat77