Aya Fukuda is an Emmy award winning art director and designer with a passion for creating playful characters and vibrant worlds. Specializing in children’s animation and illustration, Aya loves to design fun and imaginative content to inspire curiosity and encourage kids to learn and grow.

After 18 years at Soup2Nuts, where she oversaw the design development of nearly every property produced, Aya is a full-time freelancer residing in Boston. From original concepts to creating character turns and rigging, Aya designs characters, props and backgrounds for illustrations, TV and web content. Clients include PBS Kids, Sprout, Sesame Workshop, Disney, Warner Bros. Animation, MIT Media Lab, and Hasbro.

Aya has 3 lazy cat co-workers, loves to hike, bake, and is occasionally seen decorating cookies at 2:00 AM. Scroll below for more information on some of her favorite projects.

Astroblast! ⏯

Astroblast! is a preschool series for Sprout that teaches the values of friendship, team leadership, and embracing differences. The lovable cast of characters, Comet, Sputnik, Jet, Halley, Radar and Sal, have unique personalities that kids can identify and relate with. In each episode, a poor behavioral choice is made, and the characters learn the importance of communicating effectively to resolve problems and create positive relationships and healthy habits.

MIT Media Lab Word quest game

The WordQuest game is being developed at the MIT Media Lab, designed to help build a child’s vocabulary. Through the wonders of robotics and coding technology, this game is designed for a child and an interactive robot to take turns exploring and identifying clickable objects in different scenes.

Wordgirl ⏯

Wordgirl is an Emmy award winning show for PBS Kids, created to expand and enrich kids’ vocabulary. Through humor driven writing, engaging character designs and imaginative backgrounds, Wordgirl and her sidekick Captain Huggy Face battle evil villains while teaching new words in a fun and inviting environment.

Sesame Street Magical Car Races ⏯

Magical Car Races is an animated series developed for the Sesame Street YouTube channel. When Abby magically transports her friends to an imaginative race track, the racers must problem solve obstacles to cross the finish line!

Scigirls

SciGirls is an Emmy award-winning PBS Kids television show, website, and educational outreach program that engages and inspires girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Each episode has an animated intro, mid and outro scene, where characters Izzie and Jake seek out the Scigirls to learn how to solve a problem. In the live-action scenes, every episode introduces a new group of enthusiastic Scigirls who, paired with a female mentor, learn how to design their own experiments and investigations on topics ranging from light pollution to robotics to archeology.