UAL Extended Diploma Illustration & Animation student Aeryn Moor is the recipient of this years Governors’ Award. The award is given to the student who has the most impressive work. Their work is regarded as being the ‘Best in Show’.

Staff members said Aeryn won the award because they have “spent the past 2 years with the passion and will to exceed the standards set before them. This person has taken both their specialism and dream role seriously. From learning the fundamentals to teaching themselves the new software, this student has been focussed and aspirational. This student leaves us with plans to work with their heroes and find their place in the industry. We have no doubt that this will be the case, and we cannot wait to see what they will accomplish in the future.”

Aeryn, who joined us from Bedale & Bedale High School joined the college because “I wanted to develop my skills in animation and illustration and gain a better insight into the creative process.”

Scroll to read more about Aeryn’s work and her award win:

How did you find your time on the UAL Extended Diploma in Illustration & Animation?

I enjoyed my time on the Illustration & Animation course, the range of projects we were given over the span of the two years allowed me to gather my confidence in experimentation and being able to respond to different briefs set by clients. While the course was a lot of work, with the help of the tutors I feel like it really allowed me to push myself and grow out of my comfort zone with art.

Tell us about your FMP project!

My FMP was an animated short called Hope, which centered around Charlie and her pet dog Hope, as they navigate through an apocalyptic world in an attempt to reunite. I wanted to focus on the environments my characters were in and spent a lot of time focusing on the composition and colours of each scene, even thumbnailing out every scene in my sketchbook before storyboarding digitally. One piece of feedback I remembered getting was to base the environments on places I’d actually been to, so I took a lot of inspiration from places I have walked my own dog, and many of Hope’s design aspects and mannerism are taken from him.

You are one of our award winners, congratulations! How did it feel to win your award?

I was very shocked and overwhelmed as I wasn’t expecting it at all, especially with such a high standard of work being displayed at the show this year! I am very proud and feel very honoured to have won.

What’s your favourite memory of your time at the School?

We were practicing our presentation skills in preparation for giving our pitches of our FMP ideas, and we had the option to present a 10-20 slide presentation about any topic we wanted. I always struggle with public speaking but I really wanted to practice so I ended up creating a presentation about 10 people I would take in a fight, just something funny and unserious as I thought that would be easier and it ended up going really well! I had a lot of fun and it made me feel much more confident about presenting my pitch later on!

What are you doing next and what are your plans for the future?

My next step is University, I have firmed my choice at Arts University Bournemouth in Animation Production and hope to be going in September! As for the future, I really hope to work in the feature film industry doing animation & Storyboarding!

Any advice for future students applying for the same course as you?

My biggest advice would be to take advantage of all the different projects you are set, especially in the first year you do a lot of experimentation in a lot of different specialisms. You might not enjoy all of them, but you will broaden your skillset much further and you can even discover you may have an aptitude for a specialism you never even considered before joining the course. It will also help you to build a strong portfolio for applying to university.

You can keep up to date with Aeryns work no her website.

Check out here Youtube and Instagram by searching: @aeryncraft

If you are exciting about telling visual stories through illustration, concept art or animation our UAL Extended Diploma in Illustration & Animation is the course for you! Find out more here.