How many visuals an online school needs
If you count, the picture is impressive. A 10-lesson course means 10 lesson covers, a course cover, a thumbnail for each video, 30 to 50 illustrations for materials, launch banners, a promo video, announcement posts. Ordering all of this from a designer is slow and expensive, and making it yourself in template builders looks generic.
AI covers most of this volume. Let us go through the four main tasks.
Task 1. Course and lesson covers
The most rewarding task for AI.
Rule one: no text. Generate the picture with empty space for the title and add the text itself in an editor. Models handle Cyrillic badly, and redoing a cover because of a crooked letter is annoying.
Rule two: one style. All the course covers must look like one series. For that, the style description is written once and copied word for word into every prompt: palette, light, manner, mood.
Which models: Flux.2 for realistic covers (about 6 rubles), Recraft v4.1 Pro for graphic and illustrative ones (about 38 rubles), Seedream 4.5 if you need a detailed 4K picture for a large banner (about 8 rubles).
About video thumbnails: a large subject, contrast, free space for a short headline. 16:9 format.
Task 2. Lesson illustrations in one style
Illustrations make the material clearer and livelier. The main difficulty here is not the quality of an individual picture but unity: 40 illustrations must look as if one artist made them.
What you need for that:
- One style in the prompt, copied into every generation unchanged.
- One character, if they recur. A character cannot be described in words each time: you will get ten different heroes. Generate them once, build a set of angles and feed the picture as a reference. More in the article on character consistency.
- One model for the whole course. Different models draw differently, and the series will fall apart.
For graphic illustrations in one style Recraft is a good fit; it is built for series. For realistic scenes, Flux.
Task 3. A course promo video
A short launch video: 20 to 40 seconds, several scenes, text and voice on top.
How to assemble it:
- Storyboard. Break the video into scenes, each with one action and one camera move. A text AI is handy for writing the script.
- Generating the scenes. Drafts on an inexpensive model, the final on the one best suited to the task.
- Editing. Voice, music and titles are added during assembly.
The detailed process is in the article on how to make Reels with AI: the logic of a promo video is the same. A separate tip on sound: if you add voice and music in the edit anyway, turn off native sound in the model; it doubles the generation price.
Task 4. A teacher avatar
A tempting idea: make a digital teacher and not record lessons. Technically it is possible; details in the article on the AI talking avatar.
But education has a nuance worth thinking about in advance. People buy a course largely for the sake of a specific expert: their experience, manner and the trust they inspire. A fully synthetic teacher undermines that trust, especially if students figure it out.
A sensible balance:
- A live person teaches the main lessons. That is the value of the course.
- The avatar covers the routine: announcements, platform instructions, short explanations, material updates. Things that change often and are inconvenient to re-record every time.
And remember: if the avatar is made from a photo of a real teacher, you need their consent, and some models will refuse to work with a real face.
What it costs
An estimate for a 10-lesson course, KADR prices for October 2026:
| What | Quantity | Model | Approximately |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lesson and course covers | 11 | Recraft v4.1 Pro | 417 rubles |
| Lesson illustrations | 40 | Flux.2 Pro | 253 rubles |
| Video thumbnails | 10 | Flux.2 Max | 126 rubles |
| Promo video, 5 scenes | 5 | Veo 3.1 Fast | 632 rubles |
| Margin for regenerations | x2 |
This is not a public offer.
In total about three thousand rubles for all the course visuals with a margin for failed attempts. More on saving on video in the article on how much a minute of AI video costs.
About rights to the visuals
If you sell a course, it is worth understanding how rights to AI images work: authorship here depends on your creative contribution, not on pressing a button. Briefly and without legal fog in the article on copyright for AI images.
In short
AI covers most of an online school’s visuals: covers, thumbnails, illustrations, promo videos. The key is to keep one style across the whole course, generate without text and add it separately, and set a recurring character with a picture. An avatar is good for routine, but the main lessons are better taught by a live expert: that is who people pay for.
