Nature Recovery Animation
How Cheshire West and Chester Council Brought a Lost Landscape Back to Life Through Animation
50+
Bespoke, individual hand-drawn illustrations created
The challenge
Cheshire West and Chester Council needed to launch a ten-year wetland recovery programme and bring communities, landowners and partners into the story from day one.
What we did
We created a long-form campaign launch animation built from 50+ individual hand-drawn illustrations, voiced, scored and faithfully rooted in Cheshire’s specific wildlife and habitats.
What changed
The animation was shared by both the Council and The Cheshire Wildlife Trust at launch, attracting community pledges and survey responses – and giving a decade-long vision a story people could feel.
About this project
The Challenge
Sharing an ambitious environmental vision
Launching a ten-year environmental programme is no small act of communication. The Lost Wetlands project needed to move people — to help them understand not just what was being planned, but why it mattered and how they could be part of it. The audience was broad: local residents, landowners, partner organisations and funders, each with a different relationship to the landscape and a different reason to care.
Generic visuals would not have served that goal. The Council knew that to build genuine early engagement, the animation needed to feel rooted in place — recognisably Cheshire, authentically natural, and careful in how it represented the wildlife and habitats at the heart of the project. The stakes were high: this was the opening conversation in a decade-long story.
There was also a practical dimension: the animation needed to be completed and ready ahead of the official programme launch date, within a defined timeline. We understood that pressure — and we’ve worked with enough purpose-led organisations to know that deadlines are rarely just deadlines. They represent real moments that cannot be moved.
Project Details
Client
Cheshire West and Chester Council
Sector
Public Sector
Environmental Conservation
Nature Recovery
Services
Hand-drawn Animation
Campaign Launch Film
Voiceover Production
Duration
8 weeks
Deliverables
1 x long-form campaign launch animation (hand-drawn), 50+ bespoke illustrations, scripted voiceover with natural soundscape and music, postcard design & print
Team
RM
Rachel Mellor
Producer
V
Vicki
Illustrator
KN
Katie Nuttal
Animator
Usage
Grant funding application
historical resource
education, awareness
Our Approach
Reflecting natural habitats with bespoke illustrations and soundscapes
Our starting point, as always, was to ask why before how. What did the Council want people to think, feel and do when they watched this animation? The answer shaped every creative decision that followed.
We worked closely with the Green Infrastructure Team at Cheshire West and Chester Council, turning their supplied script into a campaign launch animation unlike anything that could have been produced with stock assets or generic motion graphics. The brief called for something that felt genuinely of this place — and so we proposed hand-drawn illustration as our creative approach from the outset.
Our illustrators developed over 50 individual hand-drawn designs, each one carefully researched and crafted to represent the actual wildlife and habitats of the Cheshire region with accuracy and care. The process was validated by representatives from Natural England and the Peaks, ensuring that the finer ecological details were right. Scripted voiceover narration, natural soundscape audio and a thoughtfully chosen music track were woven together to bring the finished piece to life.
Hand-drawn animation is inherently more complex and time-intensive than vector or motion graphics work — but with careful planning and close collaboration at every stage from storyboard through to final delivery, we completed the project ahead of the programme launch date. Elis from the Green Infrastructure Team told us it was a process that helped the team develop their vision into something they would not have conceived of achieving without us — which, for Majestical, is exactly the kind of outcome we work towards.
Thinking about how to bring your own purpose-led project to life?
Having worked with Majestical on our nature recovery video, I would highly recommend them - especially if you are looking for an organisation who provides consistency, keeps to a tight project timeframe and are a genuine pleasure to work with. They helped us not only capture our vision for the video but helped to develop it into something we would not have conceived of achieving without their help.
Elis, Green Infrastructure Team, Cheshire West and Chester Council
Grant funding secured
Key partner organisations that shared the animation at launch (CWAC and Cheshire Wildlife Trust)
Total land covered across all six UK nature recovery projects
The Impact
Making the invisible, visible
The Lost Wetlands animation launched alongside the programme in January 2024 and quickly found its audience. It was shared by both Cheshire West and Chester Council and The Cheshire Wildlife Trust, drawing in a wide range of wildlife pledges and community survey responses — exactly the kind of early stakeholder engagement the project needed to build momentum.
The animation did what the Council had hoped: it translated an ambitious, complex ten-year plan into something people could feel. It made the invisible visible — the loss of these habitats over generations, and the real possibility of their return.
For Majestical, this project sits at the heart of why we do what we do. Being trusted to help launch a landscape-scale nature recovery programme — and to give it a visual identity rooted in authentic care for the natural world — is the definition of purpose over noise. Our B Corp certification is not a badge. It is a commitment to investing in the kind of work that genuinely matters.
“These nature recovery projects will enrich our landscapes for wildlife, develop resilience to climate change, catch carbon and help to clean up air and water. They will help restore entire ecosystems, allowing many species of wild animals and plants to spread and thrive.” — Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England
How long does a hand-drawn animation project take to produce?
Hand-drawn animation is one of the most time-intensive approaches we offer – and intentionally so. For the Lost Wetlands project we worked within an 8-week timeline, which required careful planning and close collaboration from storyboard through to delivery. For most hand-drawn projects we recommend building in 8-12 weeks from brief to final film. The complexity – number of scenes, characters and length of the animation – will shape the timeline, and we will be clear with you about what is realistic from the outset.
Why choose hand-drawn animation over motion graphics or vector animation?
When authenticity and a sense of place are central to your brief, hand-drawn illustration carries something that vector animation simply cannot. For Cheshire West and Chester Council, the brief was to represent specific Cheshire wildlife and habitats faithfully – not generically. Hand-drawn designs allowed us to build 50+ bespoke illustrations that were recognisably of this landscape. If your story has a particular world at its heart, hand-drawn animation tells your audience that the detail matters.
How do you ensure ecological or technical accuracy in subject-specific animation?
We take research seriously. For the Lost Wetlands animation, every animal and habitat depicted was carefully selected to represent the actual wildlife of the Cheshire region – and the completed illustrations were validated by representatives from Natural England and the Peaks before final production. If your project involves specialist subject matter, we build research and expert review into the process as standard.
Frequently Asked Questions
Working in Environmental Conservation or the Public Sector?
