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Larry Mutenda | What is government animation? Government animation is animated video made by or for a government body or public agency to explain a service, a rule or a public program. Well-known examples include NASA’s Perseverance landing animation, the UK Parliament’s How laws are made and the CDC’s warning about mixing drugs. The strongest ones explain one process in order and tell the viewer what to do next. |
Government animation covers any animated video a public body uses to explain itself. A city explains a program. A parliament explains how a law passes. A health agency warns about a risk. Agencies choose animation because it can show a process, a system or a risk that a camera can’t film.
This list covers 12 examples. Six are videos we produced for public agencies and public programs. Six come from the official channels of NASA, the CDC, the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Parliament of Victoria and the agency that made a film for the Government of Chile. We moved between animation styles on purpose, so you can compare 3D, flat 2D, cartoon, illustrated, motion graphics, stop motion, kinetic type and mixed media side by side.
Ten examples were made by or for a government body. Two are close to government work. BC Unclaimed is a non-profit designated by the Province to run a public program. Upper Hay Regional Forests is a cooperative of forest companies explaining a provincial planning system. Each third-party video comes from the agency’s own channel or from the agency that produced it. Each one plays on this page. Where a result has been published, we give it and name the source. Where none has, we say so.
For the six videos we produced, we describe the client, the format and what the script does. We have produced animation for public agencies, cities and nonprofits for more than 15 years.
| # | Video | Agency or client | Style | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The DMAIC method | LeanBC | Flat 2D characters | Process improvement |
| 2 | Perseverance landing | NASA JPL | 3D animation | Space mission |
| 3 | After a leak alert | Rancho California Water District | Flat 2D characters | Water leaks |
| 4 | How laws are made | UK Parliament | Flat motion graphics | Civic education |
| 5 | Why we assess | Oregon Department of Education | Illustrated characters | Student assessment |
| 6 | Don’t Stop Motion | Government of Chile | Stop motion | Rheumatoid arthritis care |
| 7 | The journey of milk | City of Overland Park | 2D cartoon | Children’s education |
| 8 | Mixing uppers and downers | CDC | Kinetic typography | Overdose prevention |
| 9 | VOITs in forest planning | Upper Hay Regional Forests | Illustrated 2D | Forest management |
| 10 | How the European Parliament works | European Parliament | Motion graphics and footage | Civic education |
| 11 | Money you might be owed | BC Unclaimed | Motion graphics | Unclaimed property |
| 12 | How parliament makes laws | Parliament of Victoria | Cut-out mixed media | Civic education |
Client: LeanBC, the continuous improvement program of the BC Public Service Agency.
Project type: Flat 2D character animation, 1:29.
Communication challenge: Explain a five-phase problem-solving method to public servants who have never used it.
Creative approach: The script opens with questions staff already ask themselves. Why isn’t there a better way to do this? Why does everything take so long? Then it answers them with one method.
The video walks through the DMAIC phases in order. The team defines the problem and collects data from customers, employees and systems. It then holds a workshop called a Kaizen with the people who do the work. Together they map every step of the process and time it. They remove the steps that aren’t needed and plan the move to the new process. The plan, do, check, act cycle keeps the change in place.
The LeanBC program has supported ministries across the BC Public Service for over a decade. A short animated training video lets every new team hear the method explained the same way.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Landing Animations is a 3D animated reel from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It shows each stage of entry, descent and landing before the rover touched down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.
No camera could film the whole landing ahead of time, so animation was the only way to show it. The reel compresses about seven minutes of descent, according to NASA’s description of the reel. The spacecraft slows from about 12,100 mph at atmospheric entry to about 2 mph at touchdown. Each event gets its own shot. A complex sequence reads as a clear order of steps.
It shows what government animation can do that live action can’t. The animation set expectations before the event. When the real landing happened, viewers already knew what each stage looked like.
Client: Rancho California Water District.
Project type: Flat 2D character animation, 6:37.
Communication challenge: Customers get an automated leak alert and don’t know what it means or what to do next.
Creative approach: The script starts with the customer’s own question. You got a leak alert, so what does it mean? From there it becomes a step-by-step guide.
The district takes hourly readings from each water meter. If water runs continuously for 24 hours, it sends an alert. The video is honest about limits. The district can’t locate or repair the leak for you, but it has tools that help. The viewer logs in to My Water Tracker, checks the meter’s leak indicator and shuts off the main valve to tell an indoor leak from an outdoor one. For indoor leaks, the script starts with toilets and a simple food colouring test.
At over six minutes, this is the longest video on the list. It earns the length because each step is a task the viewer can do while watching, like a good how-to training video.
How laws are made is a flat 2D motion graphics video from UK Parliament. Parliament’s education service offers it to students as a two-minute overview of how bills become laws.
The subject is a process with many stages and two Houses. A bill can start in the Commons or the Lords. It must be approved in the same form by both Houses before it becomes an Act. Simple flat characters and bold colour blocks let each stage appear as one clean step.
The design never competes with the process. The viewer follows one bill from start to finish. That single thread is what makes educational videos for classrooms easy to follow.
Client: Oregon Department of Education.
Project type: 2D illustrated character animation, 3:26.
Communication challenge: Explain why schools use assessment, as one half of a two-video series with What Is Assessment.
Creative approach: Illustrated students and teachers, drawn in a comic panel style, carry the topic. An abstract policy subject gets people at its centre.
The series splits one big subject into two questions. What is assessment? Why do we do it? Each video answers one of them. That keeps each script focused, even at more than three minutes.
Don’t Stop Motion is a stop-motion short film made for the Government of Chile by the agency VML, with the animation studio Punk Robot. People living with rheumatoid arthritis hand-moulded the clay characters as part of their therapy.
The campaign tells patients about free medication and specialized therapies from government programs. The idea joins the message and the making. The clay work was part of the patients’ own therapy, so the production shows the care the campaign promotes.
The patients are the makers, not only the subjects. Stop motion shows the work of human hands in every frame.
By the numbers: VML reports more than 4 million views on digital platforms and a rise of more than 200% in campaign website visits during the launch weeks. Its case study also says the film was adopted as official educational material in primary care centres.
Client: City of Overland Park, for the Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead.
Project type: 2D cartoon animation, 2:50.
Communication challenge: Explain to young visitors how a cow’s food becomes the milk they drink.
Creative approach: A friendly host at the farmstead takes the viewer on a journey. A nutrient is the hero. The four parts of a cow’s stomach are the stops along the way.
The script talks to kids in their own terms. Cows don’t eat pizza or candy. They have nutritionists, “kinda like personal chefs for cows.” Each stomach compartment gets one plain job. The rumen mixes the food. The reticulum rolls it into cuds. The omasum squeezes out water. The abomasum breaks the food down into nutrients.
The video then moves to the milking station, pasteurization and the dairy foods kids already know. It closes with a simple send-off: stay curious and enjoy your milk. It is government animation for the youngest audience on this list.
CDC Polysubstance Animation is a kinetic typography ad from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, part of its Stop Overdose resources. It warns about mixing stimulants, or “uppers,” with depressants, or “downers.”
The ad uses animated words on a dark background instead of characters or images of drugs. That keeps the focus on one message. There is no way of knowing how your body will react when mixing drugs. The CDC’s own guidance says mixing drugs is never safe. The combined effects can be stronger and less predictable than one drug alone.
Type alone keeps the message plain and neutral. It also reads with the sound off.
By the numbers: The CDC reports that in 2022 nearly half of drug overdose deaths involved multiple drugs.
Client: Upper Hay Regional Forests, a cooperative of forest companies in Alberta.
Project type: Illustrated 2D animation, 1:33.
Communication challenge: Explain the system Alberta uses to track forest values in forest management plans, and invite the public to take part.
Creative approach: Painted forest scenes carry the script. The video lists what forests provide before it names the system.
Alberta organizes forest values with values, objectives, indicators and targets, known as VOITs. The script explains how each part works. Alberta requires a set of VOITs in every forest management plan. The public and Indigenous communities can add more based on their own forest values. Once a plan is approved, the VOITs guide how it is monitored.
The client is not a government body, but the subject is a provincial planning system. The call to action is civic. Viewers are asked to attend local forest management planning meetings and speak up for their forest values.
How the European Parliament works is a government animation from the European Parliament’s own channel. It mixes bold motion graphics with footage of the Parliament’s buildings.
The European Parliament is hard to picture from outside. The video pairs an illustrated graphic of the chamber’s seats with real footage of the Parliament. For context, the Parliament has 720 members for the 2024 to 2029 term, elected by direct universal suffrage.
The mix of styles matches the job. Graphics explain the system. Footage shows the place. This blend of motion graphics and live footage is a useful model for public sector animation that has to look both clear and real.
Client: BC Unclaimed, a non-profit society designated by the Province of British Columbia to manage its unclaimed property program.
Project type: Motion graphics video, 1:11.
Communication challenge: Explain what unclaimed money and property are, and get people to search for money they may be owed.
Creative approach: There are no characters and no story. A map of Canada with British Columbia highlighted sets the scene. The one action the viewer needs to take is a database search, so that is what the video shows.
This is a benefit message, not a warning. As with the benefit messages in our PSA video examples, the viewer has nothing to fear and something to gain. The video only has to make the next step obvious.
How parliament makes laws is a mixed-media government animation from the Parliament of Victoria’s own series, Parliament of Victoria explains. It combines paper cut-out graphics with a live-action hand that moves pieces on screen.
The Parliament of Victoria has two houses, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. Passing a law there takes six steps. The video uses laws people meet every day, such as road safety rules and signs on a pool gate.
The video grounds the process in the familiar. A sign on a pool gate is a law the viewer has already seen. From there, the process that made it is easier to care about. Compare it with the UK Parliament video at number four. The subject is the same, but the government animation style is completely different.
The 12 examples use many different styles. The strongest ones share five habits.
LeanBC walks through five phases. Rancho Water walks through a leak search. NASA shows a landing stage by stage. Each video follows one path from start to finish, so the viewer never has to hold two ideas at once.
Rancho Water opens on the alert the customer just received. The City of Overland Park video opens with a host at the farm. LeanBC opens on questions staff already ask. The first seconds meet the viewer’s own situation.
3D shows a landing no camera could film. Stop motion lets patients shape the characters with their own hands. Kinetic type delivers a blunt health warning. Cartoon speaks to children at a city farm. The best government animation picks its style for the audience and the message.
Search the database. Log in to My Water Tracker. Attend a planning meeting. A government animation should leave the viewer knowing exactly what to do after it ends.
Rancho Water tells customers it can’t locate or repair the leak for them. It then points them to the tools that can help. Clear limits set expectations before anyone calls the agency.
Government animation is animated video made by or for a government body or public agency. It explains programs, services, laws and public health risks. The examples on this page come from NASA, the CDC, three parliaments, a city and several public programs.
Animation can show what a camera can’t. That includes a Mars landing, a bill moving through Parliament or nutrients inside a cow. It can also show a sensitive subject, like drug use, without showing real people.
It depends on the audience and the message. This list includes 3D, flat 2D, cartoon, illustrated, motion graphics, stop motion, kinetic type and mixed media. Flat 2D and motion graphics suit step-by-step processes. Cartoon styles suit children. Our guide to types of animation styles compares each one, including whiteboard animation.
Long enough for one task. BC Unclaimed runs 1:11 and makes one ask. Rancho Water’s leak guide runs 6:37 because it walks through every step of finding a leak. Five of our six videos on this list run between one and four minutes.
Start with the question the viewer already has, then answer it in order and end with one action. Our guide on how to write a video script covers each step.
Government animation works when it makes a public process easy to follow. The examples here explain landings, laws, leaks, forests and farm animals. Each one takes a single process and shows it in order.
If you are planning an animated video for a public agency, start with the one step you want viewers to take. Then choose the style that shows it most clearly.
Larry is the Founder and Producer at Mammothic Films, with more than 15 years of production experience. He leads a team that creates story-driven videos for businesses and brands. A marketer, designer, and animator, Larry has overseen the production of more than 1,500 videos for Fujitsu, Logitech, Warner Brothers, NFL, Blockdaemon, Astronomer, Canonical, and 370+ other companies in Canada, the United States, and around the world.
Larry is a devout Christian who believes in placing God first, and that everything else is a blessing that comes from serving Him. When he’s not working, he’s hanging out with his wife and three kids, playing the piano, or sightseeing.