Our story
Elucidate grew from a shared belief that everyone deserves access to understanding, regardless of how they process information or how familiar they are with a subject.
Our founder is dyslexic and passionate about democratizing education by making learning more accessible to everyone. That commitment is shared by our team, brought together by a belief in the power of video to make learning more engaging, meaningful, and inclusive. As storytellers, illustrators, and animators, we combine our different skills and perspectives to help people understand and connect with complex ideas.
Together, we've developed an approach that combines thoughtful storytelling with bespoke illustration and animation, creating original visual narratives that reflect each client's brand while making their message clear and relatable to their audience.
Whether we're communicating the value of a business, explaining an innovative product, or teaching an unfamiliar process, our motivation remains the same: helping people understand something they might otherwise find difficult to grasp.
For us, there's nothing more rewarding than seeing a complex idea become clear or knowing that something we've created has helped someone learn, understand, or see things differently.
It's what brought us together and what continues to inspire our work.
Human Expertise. Thoughtful Technology.
At Elucidate, we embrace technology to streamline production while believing that human expertise, creativity, and collaboration are essential to meaningful communication.
We work closely with our clients and their subject-matter experts to ensure accuracy and a deep understanding of the concepts we're communicating. Our storytellers transform that knowledge into clear, engaging narratives, while our professional illustrators and animators create bespoke visuals tailored to each client's brand and message.
Rather than relying on AI-generated illustrations or off-the-shelf templates, we value the originality, imagination, and craftsmanship of our creative team. Technology helps us work more efficiently, but it's the combination of our clients' expertise and our team's creative talents that brings each story to life.
For us, technology supports the process. People make the difference.
The Creative Team
Lisa Smith
Lisa brings a background in journalism, television production, entrepreneurship, academia, and brand strategy to her role as founder of Elucidate. Having built businesses and advised companies on branding, positioning, and marketing, she understands the challenges organizations face in articulating their value and connecting with their audiences.
Her experience in teaching and storytelling informs her approach to each project, helping clients look beyond the features of their products or services to uncover what makes them meaningful, distinctive, and relevant.
Lisa also draws on her knowledge of emerging technologies and automation to streamline production workflows and improve efficiency. She ensures that technology supports the creative process while preserving the human expertise, collaboration, and originality at the heart of the studio's work.
Founder
Vanessa OliveIRA
Vanessa is based in Portugal, working at the point where visual design meets teaching. Her work takes dense, abstract material, systems, processes, ideas that resist a simple sentence, and gives it shape: visuals that make structure visible, animation that lets a concept unfold step by step. She designs and produces video end to end, from script and storyboard to the final frame, for clients ranging from corporate to educational.
As Elucidate’s Creative Director, Vanessa plays an integral role in bringing our ethos to life: making complex ideas accessible through thoughtful visual storytelling. She oversees our production team, ensuring that every project reflects our commitment to creativity, clarity, and quality. Her distinctive artistic vision and creative direction are evident throughout the work we produce.
Creative Director
Operations Manager
Lisa Nelson
Lisa Nelson has been part of Moving On Productions, Elucidate’s parent company, since 2016. She brings decades of experience across entertainment management, finance, global investment banking, and media production.
Her background also includes extensive work in transcription and content services, supporting clients across market research, print and television media and publishing. As a writer and with a background in music as well, Lisa brings her own creative perspective and an appreciation for the artistic process to her operational role.
As Operations Manager, Lisa helps keep Elucidate’s projects and production workflows running smoothly. Her combination of operational expertise, creative understanding, and attention to detail contributes to the collaborative approach behind Elucidate’s work.
Maria Carasa
Animation Lead
Maria Carasa is a 2D animator and motion designer fascinated by the way movement, rhythm and imagery can tell stories and bring ideas to life. With over 10 years of experience across educational, scientific and promotional content, documentaries and independent animation, she combines a thoughtful approach to design with a strong sense of timing and visual storytelling.
She enjoys exploring the relationship between movement, music and narrative, adapting her approach to the needs of each project while paying close attention to the details that make an animation feel alive. Her curiosity often leads her into personal projects, where she experiments with new ideas and creative approaches. Her short film Sunny Side Up was selected for the 2024 Anilogue International Animation Festival.