Delivered by the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA), the MA Digital Effects course will provide you with a strong theoretical and technical underpinning for the principal areas of study focusing on the integration of computer graphics into film footage.

This is a truly international course, attracting students from all over the world with a diverse range of cultures and identities. We aim to take you from no experience to cinema standard photo realism within the first semester and to provide you with the skills and opportunities to realise your ideas into full production sequences that demonstrate a clear mastery of the subject. By the end of the course, you’ll be well prepared for an exciting and rewarding career in the VFX and Animation industry.

• Become proficient in acquisition filming, 3D animation and 2D compositing, facilitating your understanding of the entire digital effects pipeline
• Explore toolsets such as dynamics, green screen, tracking and digital assets in order to push yourself and your work to the next level of visual success
• Undertake multiple projects both individually and alongside students from across the NCCA Master's courses in 3D Computer Animation and Computer Animation and Visual Effects
• Benefit from visiting speaker talks from industry specialists, including some of our successful alumni. Graduates have worked on many award-winning films such as Gravity, Avatar, Inception, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Black Panther as well as prolific television series such as Game of Thrones
• Undertake a Master's project with dedicated production time to create a substantial and original digital effects project in preparation for the degree show in London attended by top industry recruiters
• Access industry-standard facilities including a new green screen and motion capture studio, as well as animation laboratories, equipped with industry-standard software Houdini and Nuke
• Attend BU's BFX Festival, the UK's largest visual effects, computer games & animation festival featuring a fantastic line-up of speakers, masterclasses, exhibitions, screenings and networking events
• This course is accredited by ScreenSkills, joining the ranks of the top creative training and education providers the UK has to offer
• BU is ranked 4th in the top 25 animation schools and colleges in the world, 3nd in Europe and 1st in the UK (Animation Career Review 2020).

Digital Effects graduates are highly sought after in the industry. This is partly due to our level of teaching in this subject area, and partly from students' desire to listen, learn and progress.

This course has the ScreenSkills Tick, which indicates the quality of our computer animation degrees and shows that we offer training that prepares you for a career in the sector. The ScreenSkills Tick is awarded by ScreenSkills, the sector skills council for the creative industries. We’ve worked very closely with ScreenSkills to develop a range of ground-breaking short courses aimed at media professionals.

All of our accredited courses have undergone a rigorous assessment process conducted by experts working in the creative media industries and our strong industry links have played an important role in gaining us this accreditation. 

Graduates have gone on to work for a variety of International VFX Companies including Double Negative (Inception), Digital Domain (Transformers, X-Men) and Sony Picture Image Works (Smurfs).