Concept and Comic Art portfolio guidance

What are we looking for?

We believe that the quality of work in a portfolio is more important than the quantity, so we are keen to see the work that demonstrates your full potential as an artist.

It must include a full range of personal artwork, coursework and sketchbooks, enabling us to fully assess your capabilities. Do not miss out other personal creative activities you have developed that might be important to support your application.

Essential

• Observational drawing skills that demonstrate a range of traditional art techniques, such as drawing from life, the human form, rural or urban landscapes and still life.
• Show your current coursework that best illustrates your development through to the final artwork.
• Examples of sketchbook pages showing original thinking and idea generation, engaging in drawing that creates the unexpected, and including quick, rough and playful doodles.
• Show sequential storytelling, which displays a flair for visual narrative production. Present as comic book pages, narrative panels or storyboard frames.

Desirable

• Explore image making using digital software such as Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint and other creative apps that focus on good line work, colour and rendering techniques.
• Engage in concept design of characters, environment and props that presents iterative design techniques.
• Show a fundamental understanding of composition and perspective.

We also seek evidence of original visual communication skills and a curious mind. We encourage you not to present work that is purely a copy of fan art, photographs, film stills and other artists' work. We frown on visibly traced or copied artwork and suggest presenting artworks that acquire methods and styles from multiple influences.

Your application

Once you have made an application for the programme, you will be required to submit an online portfolio of high-quality, scanned work via www.mailbigfile.com/dmuac with your full name and programme title. The contents of your online portfolio should be the strongest pieces in your overall portfolio, and should contain a full range of personal artwork, coursework and include sketchbooks.

Your portfolio must include examples of human figures observed from life. It is beneficial to focus on proportions and anatomy. Also, you can draw rural and urban landscapes on the spot - do not copy from photographs or comics. Please show us your ability to absorb visual information and communicate physical form in 2D, a vital skill for concept and narrative artists.

Show 2D digital artwork focusing on mark-making, rendering and colour. In addition, we would encourage you to explore character design, environment and props. And also present digital sequential art that can communicate at least one of your stories.

We are looking for enthusiastic artists, so we recommend you include examples of work done in your own time, in addition to school or college projects, to give us an idea of your motivation and passion.

We would like to see sketchbooks that show personal idea generation. Work should be experimental and playful but still coherent. Work with a range of mediums such as pencils and drawing pens. These sketchbooks can be related to coursework but mainly demonstrate a self-directed creative output. The sketchbook should be the place and time to explore your ideas.