2-YEAR PG Arts Program
Animation
Course Overview
Note: Applicants should apply to the MA courses if they intend to take up PGDP Finish. There is no separate application form for PGDP Finish; one can exit at the end of year 1 of MA with an award of a PG Diploma upon successfully completing the graduation requirements.
Animation is a versatile medium of expression and communication that spans various media and contexts, from short films and art installations to infographics, education, and apps. At Srishti Manipal, we provide instruction in animation techniques, film language, storytelling, and research, guiding students to reach new levels of fluency and sophistication in their animation practice. Our program has opportunities for students to participate in transdisciplinary projects as well as to explore individual ideas and approaches in personal works.
We understand animation as a broad range of practices in manipulated moving images, that may be created using techniques that span the hand-wrought and digital. Over the course of the MA, students may experiment with live-action, computer generated imagery, stop-motion and experimental techniques such as sand or oil-on-glass animation. We encourage collaborations and explorations across techniques and media.
Our films are screened internationally at film festivals and have won several awards and honours. Our graduates find employment in a variety of fields, including interactive and online media, television, illustration, education and advertising. Some also choose to develop their individual artistic practices securing grants, fellowships and residencies, or pursue further research through PhD programs.
Vision
The MA program provides an expansive framework to support research and experimentation in manipulated image practices, leading practitioners to use the language of animation as a means to address diverse areas of interest. At Srishti Manipal, we welcome a diverse range of students, including those who have previously studied art, as well as those from other backgrounds with a passion for the moving image. The animation program is a learning space for self-driven students with the autonomy to explore and develop personal styles, artistic visions and preoccupations.
LEVEL
Postgraduate Degree
AWARD
Masters of Arts (MA)
DURATION
2 Years / Full-time
ROUND 1 – LAST DATE TO APPLY
31 March 2025
Course Structure
- Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary studios
- Workshops
- Seminars
- Lines of Inquiries (Field work, Case Studies, Investigations, individual or Group Projects, Transdisciplinary Research)
- Theory and Understanding
- Independent Study
- Open Elective
- Practice
- Exhibitions
- Culminating Performances of Understanding (Portfolio, Transdisciplinary research, Projects, Colloquium, Capstone/Dissertation)
- Knowledge Enhancement (ability or skills)
Learning Approach
Program learning approaches include:
· A theoretical and conceptual engagement with relevant topics and discourses in moving image practices.
· Using art and design research methods to explore and articulate one’s understanding and position
· Collaboration amongst peers, practitioners and the community.
· Independent learning with close guidance from mentors
· Conception, development and production of strategic moving image works relevant to one’s line of inquiry
Disciplinary Intersections
The program is informed by the following learning disciplines:
- Animation
- Creative Writing
- Contemporary Art
- Performance Arts
- Cinema Studies
Capabilities
- Articulating and shaping one’s practice in relation to diverse contemporary contexts
- Ability to understand and imbibe contextual perspectives and synthesise individual positions
- Ability to structure thoughts in writing and present a sound understanding of a context
- Creating and constructing fiction and fictional worlds
- Ability to experiment with form, technique and material
- Constructing layers of meaning, feeling or thought in moving image
- Artistic sensibility – sensitivity, balance, measure, attention to detail etc.
- Inventive thinking, risk taking – approaching the unknown
- Asking relevant questions and using appropriate methods of research
- Ability to enquire, learn and represent a world around and/or within through moving image
- Understanding audiences and constructing viewer experience
Opportunities
- You can work in the fields of interactive media, online media, television, education, contemporary art, advertizing, and other content for screen based platforms.
- You can continue your practice, develop your own work and become entrepreneurs.
- You can pursue your research and continue to do a PhD.
- You can work for established design firms and production houses.
- You can develop your own projects and apply for grants.
FAQs
The post-graduate course in Animation at SMI provides students the opportunity to develop their moving image practice with a sensitivity towards personal, contextual and material led inquires. Students are encouraged to locate themselves within the larger cultural and contemporary media arts practices. Expertise, faculty and inputs are available to support different forms of image making techniques driven by the student’s particular interests and inclinations. They can also choose to work in contexts overlapping with other post-graduate courses at Srishti Manipal.
The program is designed to develop an individual voice and artistic practice in animation or manipulated moving image. Hence the need of each student, their background, and their intent during the course will greatly determine the roles they can acquire once they graduate. The emphasis is on developing a holistic understanding of the possibilities of these fields. The student can choose to develop skills in a stream of their choice and also combine skills from post-graduate courses from other disciplines offered across Srishti. Graduates with a post-graduate award in Animation will be able to function in different roles in the fields of research, media and entertainment, advertising, communication services, web design or in education and welfare sectors.
If you are interested in inventing and creating new worlds, if you like the art of communicating and especially to condense a lot of what you want to say in a short time, if you are playful, if you like drawing or building elements that can move and come to life, if you want to create fantastical moving image, if you want to have full control of the moving image world that you want to create, then this would be a good choice for you.
The course at Srishti Manipal gives high importance to context-based work. The context will pertain to social, cultural or environmental themes, and/or to the personal and the content of one’s own experience and art making practices. The program is designed to help students be better learners and pursue their own goals and areas of investigation. Situated in a multidisciplinary environment, there are good possibilities of comparing, acquiring and appropriating methods and practices from other disciplines into one’s own practice of digital media.