MIT Educational Game Assets

Context

KAIA engaged on an MIT educational game tied to an interactive book experience. The game needed a cohesive visual language — characters, props, UI elements, and environments that felt consistent across scenes while remaining flexible enough for developers to assemble and animate in-engine.

The challenge

Educational games fail visually when assets are produced one-off. Each screen looked like a different project. MIT needed one art direction applied across dozens of deliverables, with files structured so engineers could place and move elements without returning to the art team for every layout change.

What I delivered

Interactive book game assets

• Character sets with consistent proportions, line weight, and color palette
• Props and UI elements sized and named for direct engine import
• Asset variants for interactive states (idle, hover, active, complete)

Environment production

• Full scene environments built as layered PSD files
• Movable asset layers separated from backgrounds for parallax and animation
• Clear naming convention so developers knew which layers were static vs. interactive

Approach

AI-assisted generation for volume, manual cleanup in Krita and Blender for consistency. ComfyUI workflows templated per asset type (character, prop, environment) so style did not drift between batches. Every deliverable went through a style checklist before handoff.

Results

• Consistent visual system across the game's interactive book sequences
• Engine-ready PSD structure reducing developer back-and-forth
• Pipeline reusable for future educational content at KAIA

Takeaways

Game asset pipelines are file structure problems as much as art problems. PSD layer discipline saves more time than any single hero illustration.