*QS Stars World University Rankings 2023
**Guardian University Guide 2025
***Research Excellence Framework 2021
****The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025
Animators use the power of motion to inspire audiences and breathe life into a wide variety of design projects. Help businesses take their creative outputs to the next level and realise your own imaginative ambitions with the University of Sunderland’s 100% online MDes Design with Animation.
This course has been developed to nurture highly skilled and ethically conscious designers who understand the transformative power of design in shaping society and the world.
It aims to immerse students in the critical aspects of animation design through a dynamic curriculum that blends theoretical frameworks, historical contexts, practical exercises, and case studies, so students develop their capacity to evaluate and creatively tackle design challenges.
Underscoring the fusion of design theory and practice and bolstered by specialised online tutors dedicated to supporting students the course is designed for adaptability and global applicability.
You will learn the spectrum of media, materials, techniques, and processes, tailoring your learning journey to your specific passions and professional aspirations. Overall, you will develop the technical mastery and creative prowess, career-oriented mindset, and understanding of the creative industries landscape needed to excel in the dynamic realm of animation design.
Our courses set out to help working professionals maintain their existing commitments while pursuing their own professional development, with 100% online teaching and learning and no on-campus requirements.
Your studies will take place in a purpose-built digital learning environment, so you can access your course materials anywhere and anytime around your day to day activities and commitments including work, family and social.
The course is offered as asynchronous learning on both full-time and part-time tracks so you can study at a pace that suits you.
With six starts per year you can also kickstart your professional design journey outside the traditional academic calendar and within weeks of admission.
Students of this course develop a systemic understanding of design knowledge and awareness of the existing challenges and new insights of design practice today
They may graduate as skilled ethical designers with an understanding of how design can positively impact society and the world.
Importantly, you will learn how to position and promote your creative projects, recognising possible career paths and potential demand for your work, within the creative industries using a keenly developed understanding of the sector.
The University of Sunderland has been teaching international students for more than 40 years and our global connections span the globe with campus locations in Hong Kong, Sunderland and London, as well as partnerships in the Caribbean, Greece, Kenya, Malaysia, Lanka, Oman, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tashkent and Vietnam. These connections mean our students collaborate and learn with through a diversity of perspectives and build truly global networks throughout their studies.
International students comprise a high percentage of our student population and our distance learning students can be found in all corners of the globe. We also have an excellent reputation in UK widening participation and have been awarded 7th in the UK for social inclusion (The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024).
Our expertise, our cutting-edge technology and our vast experience delivering excellent online learning experiences to global students is key to what sets the University of Sunderland and our online MDes Design with Animation apart.
If you are based in the UK, you may be eligible for a government-backed postgraduate loan to cover the full costs of the course.
In addition, if you have successfully completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Sunderland, you are eligible for a 10% tuition fees reduction on our postgraduate programmes.
You pay tuition fees for each module taken, either module-by-module or in full at the start of your course.
If you pay module-by-module, you will pay in instalments of £565.
Gain a critical understanding and experiment with a range of ideation techniques and approaches to developing creative ideas. Finetune your understanding with input from top professionals and understand how to honestly rate an idea. Learn to build a hook to captivate your audience, whether through storytelling and narrative, surprise and novelty, authenticity and passion or clever copywriting.
Effectively present and communicate your ideas. Select and apply your ideation techniques to produce imaginative concepts for a live or envisaged project.
Develop a critical understanding human activity’s impact on this planet, and the intentions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Learn how to be more sustainable in your own design practice, and how to use the power of design to influence other people to live more sustainably. Explore sustainability through a variety of lenses such as climate action, reversing poverty, good health and wellbeing for all, gender equality, affordable and clean energy, sustainable cities and communities, life below water and more.
>Apply your design skills to address one of the many important global challenges in SDG. Aim to win a University Sustainable Futures Prize through your work in trying to make the world fit for future generations.
Develop a comprehensive understanding of approaches to design research, techniques and methodologies that can be applied to your own work, or advanced scholarship. Learn the importance of self-directed continuing professional development, as a normal means for creatives to innovate and push their boundaries and to stay at the forefront of a fast-changing creative world.
Learn how to make a brand stand out in an increasingly a micro-attentive world. Capture attention across different media and platforms including social media. Understand and experiment with key design approaches such as micro-content and snackable design, interactive and immersive experiences, multi-sensory branding, brand storytelling and associations and more. Develop a deeper understanding of brand personality, tone of voice and maintaining authenticity.
Apply your design knowledge and skills to an exciting branding project and document your creative journey through a module journal/design diary.
Experiment with a range of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and new technologies designed to generate text, images, video, sound, computer code and other key outputs. Gain a critical understanding of the copyright and ethical considerations in the use of AI. Develop a robust understanding of how AI tools and new technologies can be used ethically in the process of creative design, without replacing the need for human expertise, decision-making and ingenuity. Apply your developing skills with AI to creative outcomes.
Gain the critical knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to lead and manage design-driven initiatives in various industries, fostering innovation, and driving business success through design. Gain insights into strategic design thinking and the leadership and management of design.
Develop an understanding of practical applications by learning from real-world examples of successful and unsuccessful design management practices. Understand some of the key considerations and issues around intellectual property and copyright.
Recognise some of the issues around managing teams and external partners, and better understand the role of a designer in the bigger picture of the design process. Use your creative design skills to explain or illuminate important aspects of design management to a non-specialist audience.
Gain the critical knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to lead and manage design-driven initiatives in various industries, fostering innovation, and driving business success through design. Gain insights into strategic design thinking and the leadership and management of design.
Develop an understanding of practical applications by learning from real-world examples of successful and unsuccessful design management practices. Understand some of the key considerations and issues around intellectual property and copyright.
Recognise some of the issues around managing teams and external partners, and better understand the role of a designer in the bigger picture of the design process. Use your creative design skills to explain or illuminate important aspects of design management to a non-specialist audience.
Develop a critical understanding of the role and power of design to change hearts and minds, perceptions and behaviours, and create real impact on society. Develop your study skills and research methodology. Investigate and critically evaluate how key approaches to design for social change have succeeded or failed in your own specialism, in past and contemporary work.
Identify important societal or global issues that you are passionate about, and apply what you’ve learned to develop your own ideas, concepts and creative designs for a project that will help make the world a better place.
Gain a critical understanding of strategies to maximise the chances of interview and employment including common shortlisting processes, and key interview questions and responses. Critically evaluate approaches to self-employment and the pros and cons of different types of structure. Understand some of the key profit/loss, tax implications and impacts on lifestyle, of being employed or self-employed.
Develop strategies for identifying employers or clients that would value your style of work and those you would like to work with. Fine-tune how you describe your skills and knowledge and align it to your ideal career path.
Gain a critical understanding of what constitutes good self-promotional materials in differing contexts, such as showreel, portfolio and online profile. Understand the power of interaction with your audience and plan to harness unpaid promotion and advertising. Learn the language of self-description, that allows the highlighting of strengths while avoiding appearance of arrogance.
Apply your advanced skills to design self-promotional materials that will give you the best chance of gaining the kind of work that you aspire to do as a career.
Gain a critical understanding of the animation principles as they apply to 2D digital characters. Advance your knowledge of character anatomy/structure and movement within 2D environments. Enhance your skills with concept and storyboarding, rigging and 2D skeleton setup. Understand approaches to animation blocking, secondary animation, timing and adjustments.
Rig and animate your own fully developed 2D character to use in interactive storytelling and be able to manipulate your rig to convey a range of emotions and/or reactions.
Learn how to design, rig and animate a 3D character using key industry software (currently Maya and Blender). Apply the animation principles to your own 3D digital storytelling. Develop your understanding of concepts and storyboards, 3D skeleton setup, animation blocking, secondary animation, timing and adjustment in 3D environments.
Create a small collection of short compelling animations that explore a 3D character’s personality, charm, purpose and energy.
QTop 40 university (Guardian University Guide 2025)
Best in North East (The Times Good University Guide 2024)
More than 70% of Nursing research rated ‘world leading’ or of 'international importance'***
University of the Year for Social Inclusion (The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, 2024)