The American Red Cross needed a series of videos to help people understand what to do during five different extreme weather events: tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, extreme heat and blizzards.
Small, calm subject matter. Very relaxing. Definitely no flying debris, rising water or urgent safety advice involved.
Each video was created in English, Spanish and ASL, making accessibility and clarity central to the whole project. The goal was to make practical emergency advice easy to understand for as many people as possible, across different audiences, languages and communication needs.
This was a shared effort between Levitate, an American agency who handled the green screen shoot, and the Explanimate team, who handled post-production and VFX.
The strategy was to build a clear visual system that could support live action talent while bringing each weather event to life around them. The videos needed to feel direct and useful, but also visually engaging enough to keep people watching.
Because when you are explaining what to do in a blizzard, you do not want the audience thinking, “This feels a bit like a workplace induction video from 2008.”
The core idea was to place the presenter inside animated emergency scenarios.
Rather than relying only on spoken instructions, each video used VFX, animated props and digital environments to help show the situation clearly. Tornadoes could gather. Floodwaters could rise. Heat could shimmer. Snow could close in. Earthquakes could make the world feel unstable, ideally without actually shaking the studio apart.
This helped turn safety guidance into something visual, memorable and easier to follow across English, Spanish and ASL versions.
The visual approach needed to balance urgency with clarity.
The animated environments and props had to feel big enough to communicate real danger, but not so dramatic that they distracted from the advice. This was safety communication, not the opening scene of a disaster movie, although we respect the temptation.
Each weather event needed its own visual identity while still feeling part of the same series. That meant consistent styling, careful pacing and clear interaction between the live action talent and the animated world around them.
The biggest challenge was coordination.
Because Levitate was filming on green screen while our team was planning the animated props and environments, we had to communicate what we needed on the fly. The talent’s eyelines, gestures, body position and timing all had to line up with things that did not exist yet.
Which is very normal in VFX, and still somehow feels like politely asking someone to point at an invisible tornado with confidence.
Refinement focused on making those interactions feel natural, making the safety information easy to follow, and ensuring the English, Spanish and ASL versions all worked clearly within the same visual system.
The final series gave the American Red Cross a set of accessible, practical videos covering five major extreme weather events across English, Spanish and ASL.
The package helped turn essential emergency guidance into clear, visual content that could support more people, in more situations, with fewer barriers to understanding.
Because in a crisis, nobody should need to decode the message first.
