Design, ranging from forensic art and facial recognition to comics and cartoons, is a major part of this year’s University of Dundee Masters Show at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.
The exhibition, which opens to the public today, showcases the work of 70 students on some of the UK’s most innovative and exciting postgraduate courses. I am a veteran of the Masters Show but, even so, this year’s instalment is an exciting one for me as a cohort of MDes Comics & Graphic Novels students will be exhibiting their work for the first time.
I was asked to develop the MDes course in order to give Comics students a more practical outcome to their studies and their output demonstrates their development. There is a wide variety of work on display, including comics about Anne Boleyn, Paolo Uccello, trauma, the human spirit, love and loss, science fiction and time travelling heroes of tomorrow.
The diversity shown in the final comics produced by our graduands can also be seen in the work of students on my other course, the MSc in Animation & VFX. Since taking over the running of the MSc I have been developing strong links with the animation, film and TV industry, across the globe.
This both brings in students from industry looking to further develop their skills, and creates opportunities for them after graduation. One of this year’s exhibitors, Andrea McSwan, came to the course with a background as a set designer in film and television having cut her teeth on the first Judge Dredd film in 1995, which starred Sylvester Stallone. Andrea wanted to develop her digital film-making skills on the course, and her final masters film showcases live action elements, 3D animation and high-end compositing work, in a film entitled ‘Thaw’.
Animation & VFX graduates include Amit Dev and Bimpe Alliu, who now both work for Industrial light and Magic (ILM) in London, working on feature films such as ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ and the new Steven Spielberg directed ‘Ready Player One’. A student I recruited at San Diego Comic Con three years ago, Kaitlin Burge, is now a producer at Dundee-based games company, Outplay Entertainment. Katherine Melville, who graduated from the MSc course last year, is now working at London based Visual Effects outfit One of Us, who recently won a Bafta for their work on the Netflix show, ‘The Crown’.
Rossi Gifford is one of our comics success stories. She took the publication she started in Dundee, ‘Spirit Leaves’ to Canadian publisher, Chapterhouse Comics. They picked it up as an ongoing series, which is now about to be collected in a graphic novel. Rossi has also worked on a variety of animated shows as a lead character/concept artist on projects such as Nickelodeon’s “Welcome to the Wayne” and ‘Sesame Street’.
Claire Roe is another successful graduate, becoming an artist on the Diamond Steel Comics successful superhero series, ‘Saltire’ and has since went onto work for Boom! Studios, Vertigo and DC Comics ‘Bargirl: Birds of Prey’, all in the US. MLitt graduates, Erin Keepers and Norrie Millar’s strip, ‘Minus Inertia’ has just launched in David (V for Vendetta) Lloyd’s digital comic, Aces Weekly.
Looking to the future, I can see a convergence with much more crossover between media disciplines, both in academia and industry, and we are developing a ‘transmedia’ strategy to take us forward into the next decade.
The Masters Degree Show runs until Sunday, August 27th. Make sure to get along to take in the visually stunning art and transformative work produced by postgraduate students on these and the other courses – MFA Art & Humanities, MFA Art Society & Publics, MSC Forensic Art & Facial Identification and MSC Medical Art.
Phillip Vaughan is the Course Director of both the MSc in Animation & VFX, and also the new MDes in Comics & Graphic Novels.
