Games Arts (with Integrated Foundation & Professional Practice Years)

BA (Hons) Games Arts with Integrated Foundation Year and Professional Practice Year is a five-year degree programme, including a foundation year to help develop your skills and creativity before you start the first year of the degree course and your fourth year would be an industry placement to further develop your skills and CV.

Create characters. Tell stories. Build worlds.

The best games artists can do something rare: combine the eye of a traditional artist with the technical ability to build entire worlds around their idea. They sculpt, paint, light, and compose – and every decision has to work in real time, at scale, under constraints. That’s what this course teaches.

Here, you'll create characters, environments, and props using industry-standard pipelines – from 2D concepts through to high-fidelity 3D production in Unreal Engine. But your learning goes way deeper than just using the software. Drawing, digital painting, and visual storytelling run through the course because those are the skills that don't date – and the ones that will set your work apart for the rest of your career.

From first year, you'll work in cross-disciplinary game production teams alongside designers and developers, contributing art to playable prototypes in a studio environment that mirrors how the industry actually works. You'll graduate with a professional portfolio, clear creative identity, and the confidence to walk into a studio and deliver from day one.

If you prefer a closer, more community feel, UCA’s creative campuses in Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, and Maidstone could be for you. Each campus is home to a vibrant community of like-minded creatives, with supportive and passionate academic staff to help you bring your ideas to life.

As a UCA student, you’ll have access to their specialist creative facilities, from VR studios and digital editing suites to traditional craft workshops and your own dedicated art space. Here you can experiment, find inspiration, and get all the support you need.

UCA know you're more than just grades – that's why they’ll look beyond your certificates to get an understanding of your passions, personality, and portfolio.

Applying through Clearing could lead to a degree you’ll love. Join UCA’s creative community this September.