Signed, sealed and delivered! When we were presented with the opportunity to produce a custom whiteboard animation video about the impact of heatwaves for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, we were excited to be part of such a meaningful project. Here’s a quick introduction to the Climate Center, a summary of the whiteboard animation production process and the explainer video we produced for this client.
About The Climate Centre:
Climate change affects us all, but those living in the poorest parts of the world are amongst the most heavily impacted. The Climate Centre helps the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement address the humanitarian impacts of climate change. It’s their mission to reduce the impacts of climate change and extreme-weather events on vulnerable people. When Ramiz Khan of the Climate Centre reached out to us, we couldn’t wait to get started.
The client's request:
The Climate Centre requested two whiteboard animated explainer videos for the Heatwave Risk campaign in cities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The main objectives were to clearly explain what a heatwave is, describe what the urban heat island effect is, dive into the health and economic impacts of extreme heat and the impact of climate change on heatwaves and the heat island effect.
A quick summary of the requirements:
Main goal : To explain what a heatwave is and visualize the impact.
Desired mood : Professional and serious
Desired length : 2.5 minutes
Script provided : Yes
Voice-over provided : No (Requested accent: English, British)
Color : Full color
Additional notes : N/A
The whiteboard animation production process:
Some prefer it if we take care of the entire process, from script to final animation, while others prefer to provide the script for their explainer, ideas for the storyboard or the voice-over. Be involved as much or as little as you want! We’re here to support you every step of the way. For this project, Ramiz and his team had already produced the scripts. We reviewed the scripts, made a few minor suggestions for improvement and proceeded with the storyboard.
After a brainstorm session and creating a written description of each scene, we started working on matching illustrations. To connect with the target audience (locals from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa), we produced South Asian and African characters with traditional as well as non-traditional clothing. We drew characters suffering from extreme heat, workers in a factory setting sweating and a heat island.
Here are some of the initial sketches we produced:
Ramiz and his team liked our initial illustrations, forwarded their feedback and we updated the illustrations and added color and shade.
Here are some of the finalized illustrations:
We then produced a voice-over with a serious tone of voice and a British accent as requested, added a calm and serious background track and animated the approved illustrations. About a week later, the whiteboard explainer videos were ready to be presented to Ramiz and his team.
The verdict: They loved the final result. So much so that they asked us to produce two more versions: one in Bengali and one in Nepali.
The final result:
Without further ado, here’s the final result:
What do you think?
A special thanks to Ramiz Khan. We appreciate the confidence you have placed in us. It was a pleasure working with you. And to the Climate Centre, we would like to say: we admire your efforts! Keep raising awareness to help those most vulnerable to climate change. We loved being able to contribute, even if it’s just a little.
Want to support The Climate Center?
Visit www.climatecentre.org
