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- BA (Hons) Illustration (Comics)*
- Course details
BA (Hons) Illustration (Comics)*
- Duration: 3–4 years full-time
- Placement year: Optional 1 year
- Course code: W220 (UCAS)
- Institution code: A66 (UCAS)
BA (Hons) Illustration (Comics) course information
On BA (Hons) Illustration (Comics), you'll explore storytelling, sequence and illustration across all three years of a combined course. Narrative plays an essential role in organising and conveying information both in our everyday lives, and within wider culture and society; its principles also underpin most visual communications. The skills and strategies required for communicating within graphic narratives form the core building blocks of illustration, relevant and central in all approaches to creative practice. Through engaging with a wide range of sequential forms and formats, you'll have access to opportunities for storytelling and innovation relevant to both authorship of work and industry-led projects.
When focusing on comics and sequential illustration, you'll develop characters, stories and visual universes unfolding across multiple media and platforms to meet your audience. You'll explore a range of processes and techniques from drawing, painting, and printmaking, borrowing from fine arts, graphic design and illustration to craft unique means of visual expression, refining your approach to text and image, and considering publishing contexts and readerships.
Our curriculum and studio culture are designed to give you space to play and experiment with new concepts and processes, which will support the development of your autonomous practice and the acquisition of specialist and transferable skills. You'll take part in workshops, lectures, seminars, and other activities in our dedicated on-campus illustration studios. You'll also learn from industry experts and partners, visiting lecturers and members of the wider creative community, who'll put the contemporary dynamics of practice and the realities of professional environments at the forefront of your studies.
Ultimately, we aim to help you develop a distinctive creative practice with storytelling at its heart. You'll have the support and freedom to specialise or combine skills across disciplines, with the goal of creating original work and honing a sustainable, vibrant practice – built upon your own ideas, passions and interests, and extended through reflection, play and curiosity.
Placement year
All undergraduate courses at AUB offer an optional placement year, to be taken between your second and third years of study.
If you’re unsure about this optional placement, you don’t need to decide now. Once you’re here and studying with us, the course team will discuss the placement options with you, so when the time comes, you can make a decision that’s right for you.
Level 4 (first year)
At Level 4, the emphasis is on risk-taking and experimentation, and developing core skills – including drawing and image-making strategies essential to the sequential illustrator – as well as reflective and critical abilities.
The emphasis is on learning through gaining practical experience and critical reflection, in order to form your own unique visual vocabulary. You’ll attend workshops led by our dynamic group of tutors, as well as visiting lecturers with expertise in specialist areas.
You'll explore the potential of comics in relation to aesthetics and the creation of illustrated worlds and in relation to communication and meaning making. You'll also examine and test the embedding of storytelling in the ethical, professional and social contexts of illustration.
Level 5 (second year)
At Level 5, you'll continue to expand their visual and authorial practice as you experiment with emerging processes, formats and technologies across digital, analogue, 2D or 3D, as well as collaborative projects. You'll consolidate your practice as developed in first year, with the addition of deeper technical and conceptual enquiry.
This year, you'll also explore narrative strategies and develop narrative outcomes, considering issues of adaptation, affordances and interpretation, and the relation between text and image.
In this exploration of the evolving contents for illustration and graphic narrative students build bespoke strategies for the development of unique, fun and engaging practice. You'll learn the professional skills that provide the foundation for an independent, audience-aware practice, ready for Level 6 study.
Level 6 (third year)
At Level 6, the emphasis will be on professionalism, ambition and innovation. You'll ground your practice and storytelling projects in specific contexts of Illustration, through theoretical and practical enquiry. You'll develop autonomy and the ability to bring together your specialist knowledge and skills acquired during the course. You'll prepare for your career development and take part in competitions, shows and events.
In the first part of the year, you'll focus on identifying the subject matter and contexts that influence and position your narrative storytelling and comic form. You'll be encouraged and supported with locating your work within an external audience; considering the possibilities of what you do as sustainable post-degree practice.
The decisions you make and the direction you discover will then be developed, tested and refined within the Major Project and Professional Practice units.
APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN
It's not too late to apply! Now that you've found the perfect course, it's time to join our creative community.
Check out our handy 'how to apply' guide and our portfolio top tips.
OPEN DAYS
Open Days are a great way to get a feel for undergraduate life at AUB. At an Open Day, you'll be able to explore the campus, talk to course teams and discover our industry-standard facilities.
Visit us on:
- 7 November
- 5 December
AUB SHOWCASE
We're proud of our alumni, and rightfully so.
Explore the incredible work of our graduates in our online AUB Showcase.
Browse work by course, student or theme.
Teaching, learning and assessment
Learning is through intellectual enquiry, research and practice. The course outcomes are met by deploying a wide variety of teaching and learning methods supervised by members of the team, visiting support staff, practitioners and consultants from industry.
Each unit is assessed separately, and the assessment forms part of the unit. Assessment both provides a measure of your achievement, and also gives you regular feedback on how your learning is developing.
In consultation with the Course Leader, Level Leaders are responsible for co-ordinating individual units of study, and for selecting appropriate methods of delivery according to subject matter and the student experience.
The study time allocated to each unit in the course incorporates a balance of formal teaching, tutorial support and independent learning.
Theoretical, contextual, studio and professional practices are embedded within all units. This integration dissolves the artificial barriers between these forms of engagement, such as recognising theory in making, allowing you to fully realise your potential and truly understand the rich relationship between these elements of practice.
The course is structured progressively to provide increased opportunities for independent learning as you reach the later stages of the course. The promotion of independent learning reflects your anticipated maturity as a student and allows you to direct your learning towards individual goals.
Importance is placed upon you acquiring the skills to be able to learn independently and to develop a critical awareness. This is facilitated through a variety of learning and teaching methods such as tutorials, group critiques, discussion groups, peer learning activity, projects, lectures, workshops, seminars, study visits, demonstrations, skills-based workshops, educational visits, on-site learning, ‘live projects’, learning agreements, exhibition and group presentation.
Contact hours include all scheduled teaching sessions, but also supervised time in the workshop or studio. In line with national guidance, we include in our calculation of contact hours all the time which is scheduled in the studio for independent study that's also supported by staff (either academic staff or technicians).
The information provided below gives the proportion of your study time which constitutes contact hours. Where there are optional routes through the course, we have used the figures for the most popular option.
For every unit of your course, we'll inform you of what you're expected to learn; what you have to submit; how your work will be assessed; and the deadline for presenting your work for assessment. This is made available through Unit Information, which is on your course blog.
You'll receive a final mark for each unit in the form of a percentage, which will be recorded on your formal record of achievement (transcript). Each component of assessment is graded using a notched marking scale, whereby only certain marks are used within each grade. The only marks available within any 10-point band are *2, *5 and *8 (e.g. 62, 65, 68). These marks correspond to a low, mid, and high level of achievement within each grade band.
All learning outcomes must be passed to successfully complete the unit.
On successful completion of your Honours degree course, you'll be awarded a degree classification based on your unit marks. The final classification is determined using all unit marks at Levels 5 and 6 using two different algorithms, which are detailed in the HE Student Regulations. If the two algorithms produce different results, you'll be awarded the higher class of degree.
If you have joined Level 6 through either the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) route or having completed a Foundation Degree (FdA), the final classification is determined using only your unit marks at Level 6.
For further information on assessment, progression, awards and classifications, please visit viewpoint.aub.ac.uk.
Course costs
The fee you pay AUB provides the necessary equipment and training for you to complete your course.
In most cases, you don't need to buy any specific items of kit before you start the course. You may also choose to buy some items of personal equipment such as a laptop or tablet computer, but this isn't required – desktop and laptop computers are available for you to use in common study areas, including a loan system in the Library.
It isn't possible to be precise about the likely additional costs that you may incur, because this depends on the choices you make and the projects you undertake. The University provides some basic materials, and you'll be encouraged to work sustainably and to reuse materials where possible, but you should still expect to make some financial investment.
For more information, including costs relating to certain courses, visit our Course Costs page.