BA (Hons) Animation & Games

Martial is Senior Lecturer & Course Leader for BA (Hons) Animation & Games at Arts University Plymouth. He is investigating and developing skills and research in areas of new and immersive technologies, such as AR and VR, to identify future trends. Martial is especially focused on how we can enhance these within the curriculum to support the needs and experience of our students. As part of his research, Martial has been invited to contribute as a speaker at national and international conferences such as ECEL European eLearning Conference at Sophia Antipolis Nice, Jisc RSC South West TurboTEL, and the Advance HE (Formerly HEA) Visitors and Residents Conference at Arts University Plymouth and London.​ He has recently been developing work with the Market Hall Immersive Dome and has worked on projection mapping projects for the Plymouth Illuminate festival since its creation in 2017. Martial has been proactively researching and applying technological developments in our Game Arts and Animation curriculum, and through his research has contributed to shaping Arts University Plymouth's Studio Lab for Embodied Media. The Studio Lab is a multidisciplinary team of artists and researchers who are collectively motivated to think about how we can approach the integration of biological and computational systems in a more sustainable and ethical way for the future, by establishing partnerships with regional research universities.

Luke is a freelance artist, mainly working on stylized 3D prop modelling and concept art, all with a strong link to creating fictional immersive worlds. (www.artstation.com/lukewestart). The global reach of the freelance opportunities he has created for himself, enhance his knowledge base as he supports students with similar ambitions to realise their creative potential and begin to operate as professionals within the entertainment industries themselves. Luke’s freelance experience supports students to strengthen their transferable skill sets, and their professional networks, directly supporting their continuing professional development as artists and designers. As an artist and lecturer, Luke continues to explore ways of shaping the Animation & Games curriculum to make session content relevant, fun and up-to-date with industry practice. Luke graduated with a BA (Hons) Design for Games, has completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Education at the University of Plymouth, and achieved a Masters Degree in Creative Education with a focus towards gamification in art education.

Before joining Arts University Plymouth in 2017, Eddie was based at the University of Exeter where he completed degrees in English and Film Studies. Here at Arts University Plymouth, Eddie is Cross-College Lecturer in Contextual Studies and Contextual Studies Lecturer in BA (Hons) Animation & Games. His AHRC-funded PhD thesis (awarded 2018) focussed on depictions of New York during the time of film’s early development. During his time at the University of Exeter he taught on various modules in the English and Film department. He has published widely on film and associated media and has forthcoming chapters on adaptation and intermediality in the films of Spike Jonze, monstrosity as queerness in contemporary horror film, integration as reception in The Shape of Water, and contemporary adult animation. Eddie is writing a monograph on Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, and recently published an edited collection on 21st century horror titled New Blood: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Horror, co-edited with Joe Hickinbottom and Jonathan Wroot, University of Wales Press, 2020. As a contextual studies lecturer, Eddie lectures across the university to students on various degree programmes. His role within the animation and games department is to design and deliver contextual studies across the cohort, including dissertation supervision. Eddie has presented conference papers at a variety of international events, has given public lectures, and has served as a peer-reviewer for journals in film studies.

Michael graduated from the University of South Wales in 2005 with a BA Honours in Animation. Upon graduating, he started work at a VFX facility in Soho, London, as a 3D Animator, working on films, television series, advertising and games. For 13 years Michael has worked on various projects for major studios and clients, as well as small niche productions, either on pre-production or post-production. His list of animation credits includes Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Fantastic Four (2015), The Lego Ninjago Movie and The Lego Batman Movie (2017), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), and the TV series Primeval (2008-2009). Michael’s list of visual effects credits includes Aladdin (2019), Men in Black: International (2019) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018). A full list of credits can be found on Michael's IMDb profile. He has worked in various locations around the world, including Vancouver in Canada and Sydney, Australia. His specialities are in 3D computer animation, layout and previsualisation and teaching animation students the core principles of animation as a craft. His research into augmented reality and virtual reality, and new technologies affecting the craft, has helped to shape our Studio Lab for Embodied Practice.

Aaron graduated from our BA (Hons) Photography programme in 2014 with a 2:1. He joined the academic team here at Arts University Plymouth in 2016, and he works as a Technical Demonstrator within our Animation, Photography and media courses, with a primary focus on stop motion animation and manual photography. Since joining the university's academic team, Aaron has improved and extended our stop motion animation area so that it is now at industry standard. In 2017, Aaron completed a development course at Aardman Animations; the world famous, four time Academy Award® winning animation studio, and creators of Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. Aaron's areas of interest includes lighting and composition, as well as photo-manipulation, layer masking, photo editing and music/sound. He runs stop motion and photography workshops, as well as photoshop tutorials, and greenscreen compositing in Nuke. Aaron is interested in researching node based compositing compared to layer based compositing, and Photoshop compositing.

Terry worked for several years as a freelance creative for companies nationally such as Granada Studios (ITV), and locally-based community projects, prior to returning to his roots at Arts University Plymouth in 2013. During this time he achieved his Masters Degree in Publishing with Illustration, where he focused on the links between art education as a pathway to the publishing industry through an independent process. He works in the games industry with several companies creating content for games such as Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop titles, as well as working on independent comic books in various forms from art, scripting and lettering. Currently, Terry is committed to providing students with a good foundation in practical drawing skills, with an impetus on unlocking and realising their own creativity as the industry's new content providers. The main focus of Terry's teaching practice within BA (Hons) Animation & Games has been to provide students with skills linked to context of practice, and how theory and industry all relate to the student's own development as a creative practitioner within the games industry. He also specialises in two-dimensional art, character based design, and concept art. Terry looks to develop the student understanding of fundamental drawing techniques through the use of life drawing workshops and dynamic drawing lectures related to composition perspective and use of media, all of which converts to an understanding of techniques used in digital image making for the games industry. Terry is a research academic, working with academics and artists from across the country from different HE institutions on various art-based research projects. In his spare time, he is the artist in residence at Leadworks Plymouth, where he runs workshops and works on his own arts practice.