BA (Hons) Games Design and Development

The creative arts have the power to bring people together, unite communities, support mental well-being, raise awareness of social issues and above all, bring joy to many people around the world. In Creative Industries & You 2, you will discover how you can turn your passion and talent into a collaborative project with a positive impact on society. Employing research and networking skills, you will develop a greater understanding of a charity, cause or campaign. In teams of students from all Screen and Film School courses, you‘ll select a cause and identify a way to support its key objectives, either by raising awareness, raising funds or contributing as volunteers. You will be introduced to Screen and Film School’s partner charities but you are also able to find your own, or work independently of an existing organisation. Through this collaborative project, you’ll develop essential interpersonal and communication skills, experimenting with various digital tools for enterprise. You’ll reflect on your own values, applying theories of human psychology to explore how to get the best out of yourself and each other. Building on your industry research skills, you will assess your target audience and define clear SMART targets for your project that will enable you to execute an element of the strategy and evaluate its success. In teams, you will spend time working on your project both in class and in your own time, developing effective collaborative working methods. You’ll record your project activity in your Personal and Professional Development Plan, reflecting on how you have developed and changed over the course of your first year and a half at Screen and Film School. Working with your Personal Adviser you will identify objectives, opportunities and actions that will help you stay on the path to success for the second half of your journey towards becoming a Creative Industries Professional.

This module covers the skills required to produce game environments. Students will learn to project manage, organise construction into modular elements, implement specific 3D modelling and sculpting/texture workflows, and integrate assets into a game engine. They will understand how to shape story and player experience through environmental factors and how to take skill learnt at the prop level to a more substantial piece.

Students will learn a robust character design process by developing a brief or concept, creating call-out sheets and working to reference images. They will produce detailed sculpts of multiple characters, drawing upon their foundational art skills to create realistic-looking people.

This module focuses on learning techniques to produce engaging and intuitive interfaces for games and innovative control methods alongside bringing those systems to life through graphic design and motion graphics.

Students will expand on scripting techniques both using code and visual forms. They’ll explore data types and more advanced techniques to facilitate tools and gameplay.

This module will introduce participants to the concept of procedural content creation which can substantially increase the speed of production. The sessions will look at the basic concepts of proceduralism and rule-based system development with students using Houdini in conjunction with Unity or Unreal to create and design assets that will allow artists and designers to generate and populate levels. Students will also experiment with AI art generation tools.

This module introduces the art direction and creation of highly-detailed 3D models using software such as ZBrush or Mudbox. The models are then rigged with a digital skeleton, allowing for animation and movement in game engines like Unity or Unreal.

This module introduces Materials and Shaders, Shaders are small programs that run on the graphics processing unit (GPU) of a computer, allowing for real-time rendering of objects with realistic lighting and shading effects. These effects can include reflections, refractions, and even dynamic weather patterns. Materials define the surface properties of objects, such as texture, colour, and reflectivity. They work in conjunction with shaders to create the final appearance of an object in a game world

This module covers the skills required to produce game environments. Students will learn to project manage, organise construction into modular elements, implement specific 3D modelling and sculpting/texture workflows, and integrate assets into a game engine. They will understand how to shape story and player experience through environmental factors and how to take skill learnt at the prop level to a more substantial piece.

This module continues the exploratory work you began in Context & Culture of the Creative Industries. You will directly apply ideas to your own discipline and development, selecting an area of investigation relevant to your own practice, and communicating your argument via your medium of choice. The concepts you encounter will actively critique claims to authenticity and originality; themes you will encounter frequently throughout your career as a Creative Professional. You will debate artistic production, the motivations for it, and the problems of creative autonomy. You will investigate relevant contemporary cultural issues and theories relating to society, race, gender,technology, and the environment to develop your contextual understanding of how these relate to your own creative practice, professional values, and sense of personal agency. You will be encouraged to meet with your Personal Adviser in a 1:1 tutorial to help you reflect on the strengths and areas for development identified in your Personal and Professional Development Plan in first year, tracking your academic progress and setting new actions that will support you to achieve your best work. The research methods and study habits you develop throughout this module will prepare you for next year’s Final Project, in which you will self-direct a significant piece of academic, creative and/or professional practice.

Working collaboratively, students will work in as close to a working environment as possible with students from Level 5 supporting Level 6 on their FMP alongside developing portfolio pieces., competition entries and live briefs.

Students will explore basic animation principles in relation to games design and games engines. Starting with simple sprite animations and progressing to building in-game animation state machines. Students will be tasked with understanding and building animation driven character controllers.

Sound design involves creating and implementing sound effects, such as footsteps, gunshots, and ambient noise, to provide a sense of realism and immersion in the game world. Music composition involves creating original scores or licensing existing tracks to fit the game’s mood and tone.

Game engines and middleware like FMOD and Wwise provide tools for integrating sound effects and music into the game, allowing for dynamic and responsive soundscapes that change in response to player actions and events in the game world.

Students will explore design for various hardware platforms: this might include handhelds, mobile or console. They will examine hardware requirements, restrictions and deployment processes.

Students will use the key engines technologies they have learnt to create content for VR and AR applications exploring the design and physiological challenges.

This module is the final step in your Film School journey and will support you as you look to enter your chosen field as a creative professional. Drawing on evidence from throughout your time at Screen and Film School you will critically self-evaluate your personal learning journey and industry engagements to date. You will explore concepts and theories of personal and professional development to support, challenge and test your assumptions, to determine your readiness for work in the creative industries. You will have the opportunity to discuss this with your peers and learn from your collective experiences in both small degree path groups and large mixed discipline sessions. With this position in mind, you will then be challenged to create and consolidate creative assets to give you the edge over the competition in your chosen field. Specialist workshops will be offered throughout the module, informed and delivered by our wide – reaching connections and specialist tutors in the creative industries. This culminates in the creation of a portfolio which tells the story of your personal and professional journey so far, communicating your unique professional identity and future career plans in the creative industries.

In this module you will undertake a significant project of your own choosing. It’s your chance to explore your passion within the industry and creative arts: experiment, take risks, strengthen your skills and create a product/cohesive portfolio of work that you are proud to showcase at the end of your degree. This module will support you in consolidating the broad learning and development from the course so far, building a bridge into industry, the workplace and future opportunities. You will be supported to self-direct your own learning through a series of lectures, seminars and 1:1 tutorials with expert supervisors. Primary and action research are supported in this module both through theory and feedback guidance. The series of lectures will provide a strong theoretical understanding of key research methodologies and approaches, and the application of this learning supported through feedback in seminars and tutorials. The foundations for research theory and practice are laid spine modules (as well as some core modules) in both Year 2 and 3.

The final project will be to collaboratively develop a meaningful final major project that showcases their developing skill set. This could be a game, an environment, a cast of characters or some other experimental use of the technology.

Students will be exposed to incorporating game engine technology into film and TV workflows initially using comping techniques and moving onto using virtual volumes.

Many people in the creative technology sector go on to work in freelance roles or have ambitions to set up their own businesses. This module will look at key business examples of how that works, how you can access funding and what good management of people looks like. Participants will be expected to create a high-level business plan for a future business.

This module focuses on enhancing techniques to produce engaging and intuitive interfaces for games and innovative control methods alongside bringing those systems to life through graphic design and motion graphics including VR/AR interfaces.

Students will explore storytelling and interactivity through the lens of worldbuilding and game lore. Students will explore how traditional storytelling practice has shifted and changed through the application of player agency.

Virtual production is a technique used in filmmaking and game development that combines live-action filming and computer-generated imagery (CGI) in real-time. This allows filmmakers to create complex scenes and environments that would otherwise be too costly or impractical to film on location.

Virtual production requires the use of specialized equipment and software, such as motion capture systems, real-time rendering engines, and virtual sets. These tools allow filmmakers to capture actors’ performances and render them in real-time within a virtual environment, allowing for immediate feedback and adjustments.

Students will explore more advanced animation principles in relation to games design and games engines. Using creature and human rigs students will be challenged to create live rigs for virtual production and optical capture.

Advanced shaders can simulate complex lighting effects such as global illumination, subsurface scattering, and volumetric fog. PBR materials use multiple textures and maps to create the appearance of realistic surface details such as roughness, glossiness, and metallicness.

The final project will be to collaboratively develop a meaningful final major project that showcases their developing skill set. This could be a game, an environment, a cast of characters or some other experimental use of the technology.