Media Design School at Strayer

Media Design School at Strayer is a private tertiary institution founded in Auckland in 1998, recognized for establishing New Zealand's first dedicated qualifications in digital design, 3D animation, and game development. Following regulatory approvals in 2025, the institution integrated with Strayer University while continuing to operate its specialized creative media degrees.

Simulated Studio Model

The school structures its curriculum around production pipelines that mirror commercial studios. Rather than dividing study into isolated lectures and abstract testing, programs prioritize collaborative, project-based assignments.

In the third-year capstone of the Bachelor of Art and Design (3D Animation and VFX), students operate as an internal visual effects studio. Cohorts divide into specialized disciplines—including modeling, rigging, compositing, and technical direction—to produce festival-quality animated short films. Technical direction students focus on pipeline management, scripting, and development tools to support the production's artistic goals.

Game development follows a parallel cross-disciplinary structure. Students enrolled in Game Art and Game Programming collaborate in cross-functional teams to build and ship interactive projects. Through the Sony PlayStation First Academic Development Programme, Media Design School maintains access to PlayStation development hardware, enabling undergraduate teams to publish commercial titles directly to console and PC storefronts.

Industry Certification and Toolsets

Training centers on modern production standards, utilizing physically based rendering workflows, real-time engines, and procedural asset generation. MDS is a certified SideFX Houdini school and an authorized Unity Training and Certification Partner, integrating enterprise toolsets across its visual effects and game curricula.

Available software includes industry-standard packages such as Autodesk Maya, Houdini, Nuke, ZBrush, Unreal Engine, Unity, Mari, V-Ray, and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite.

Study Environments and Delivery

Media Design School's primary Auckland campus is located in the Wynyard Quarter Innovation Precinct at 10 Madden Street. The custom-built facility houses green screen stages, audio suites, specialized digital design studios, and collaborative project areas.

In addition to on-campus cohorts, the institution provides synchronous online study options for core undergraduate degrees, streaming live lectures, workshops, and critique sessions for remote students.