The Illustration course is all about drawing stories. Learn how to use visual narrative to communicate. Refine your creative and professional skills with support from our award-winning illustrators. Gain experience through events such as East London Comic & Arts Festival (ELCAF), BD Angouleme (France) and Cheltenham Illustration Awards.

Undertake essential work experience and direct your own projects. Visual storytelling connects many aspects of illustration production, from the graphic novel to children’s books, storyboards and animation. You’ll focus on drawn ideas, a gateway to areas such as concept art and digital visualisation – and a key employment area in the wider creative industries.

In your first year you’ll develop skills in life and location drawing, printmaking, specialist techniques and animation. In your second and third years you’ll take your work to a professional level through modules such as Sequential Illustration which focuses on using  drawn images to create visual narratives such as comics and graphic novels.  You’ll also begin preparing for industry, developing your expertise in self-publishing and promotion. You’ll be equipped with the creative, technical and enterprise skills you need to progress into the creative industries on graduation.

You’ll have opportunities to showcase your work alongside world-famous illustrators at major events such as Cheltenham Illustration Awards, the London Book Fair, ELCAF (the UK’s leading independent comics festival) and the Bande Dessinee d'Angouleme festival in France (Europe’s most famous comic festival). You can also self-publish and sell your work under the university’s own 'imprint', Pittville Press, and in our illustration publications Unseen, Techne, and Olio. Our modern design facilities include printmaking studios, an Apple Mac suite, Risograph stencil printer, letterpress workshop and book-binding equipment.