Portfolio Note: The core interactive modules for this project live behind Edmentum's subscriber paywall. Visual references for the characters (Stig, Meg, Manu, Sten, and Klara) and lesson themes displayed in this page are taken from Edmentum's promotional material and can be publicly cross-referenced via official Edmentum Education City Student Resource Documents.
Scaling a Global Ed-Tech Property
Edmentum’s EducationCity is a massive online K-12 learning curriculum utilized by millions of students globally. The core instructional strategy relies on a cast of recurring characters—including Manu, Stig, Meg, Sten, and Klara—who act as subject matter experts. Rather than reading dry text, students learn complex math, science, and language arts concepts through narrative, dialogue-driven interactive lessons.
During my time at Praxis Interactive, I was a 2D animator on this multi-year production engine. The project was massive in scale, split into consecutive batches of 72 and 60 comprehensive interactive lessons. Each lesson featured full-length character-to-character instructional explanations, mid-lesson checkpoints, and final interactive practice quizzes.
Because the final product was distributed internationally, my work had to perfectly preserve the strict visual integrity of Edmentum’s brand guidelines while adapting to a highly localized, multi-language software architecture.
The 1-Week Sprint
To consistently ship a continuous stream of educational modules, the production ran on a highly synchronized pipeline. Production was divided among three dedicated development units, collectively delivering three finalized lessons every single week. Once the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and visualizers locked the storyboards, the 5-day animation and launch sprint began:
Day 1-2: Animation & Development
I executed all character performance layouts simultaneously alongside the developers writing the interactive code.
Day 3: QA Testing & Quizzes
Quality Assurance testers ran deep-dive compliance testing and logged bugs. I used this time to build out the visual components for the interactive practice quizzes.
Day 4: Bug Fixing
Cleared out the QA tracking sheet, optimizing animations and fixing rendering anomalies.
Day 5: SME Review & Build Release
Implemented final content tweaks requested by the subject matter experts to guarantee accuracy before pushing the official build to release.
Following major batch completions, I was retained alongside a core developer for the Platform Maintenance Phase, diagnosing and executing hotfixes for bugs reported live by active classroom users globally.
Standardized Rigs & Multi-Language Lip-Syncing
To maintain perfect brand consistency across multiple animation teams, Edmentum supplied a pre-approved master asset library containing foundational character rigs, expressions, and standard background plates. I worked side-by-side with our team's dedicated illustrator, stepping in to co-author new layout assets whenever production demands spiked.
The core of my daily keyframing involved driving full instructional explanations. The characters could not feel mechanical; they had to carry distinct personalities through physical gestures, posture shifts, and facial reactions while explaining topics to one another.
Because Edmentum planned to translate and localize these modules into various languages down the line, standard audio-waveform lip-syncing was completely off the table. Instead, we used a clever, predetermined looping configuration of mouth shape (phoneme) keyframes. This technical layout allowed the mouth movements to play fluidly alongside any localized language audio track without distorting the timing of the base animation file.
Core Career Takeaways
Operating within the Edmentum ecosystem was a foundational milestone that heavily shaped my discipline as a professional animator. It moved me past basic video editing and embedded me deeply inside a complex, cross-functional software production environment.
The project required collaborating daily across a large network of senior SMEs, visualizers, developers, and QA engineers. Navigating this multi-year lifecycle taught me how to work efficiently within tight corporate design systems, manage high-volume asset sheets under strict timelines, and build structural animation loops optimized for global software deployment.
