For a stretch of the pandemic, Hailey J. Strader ’19 woke every morning, made her coffee and sat down in her living room to draw on an oversize digital tablet. For eight hours a day, she used a pressure-sensitive stylus to outline characters in Richard Linklater’s upcoming animated movie Apollo 10 ½, about a Houston boy’s fascination with space exploration. Each second of footage involved drawing 12 pictures, and Strader sometimes spent days drawing a single character. By the time the project wrapped, Strader had drawn more than 9,000 individual frames.
Meanwhile, Annie McCall ’08 was managing a team of animators drawing the second season of Undone, an animated Amazon original series about a San Antonio woman who, after a car accident, begins to perceive reality differently. Like Strader’s team, the group was working remotely. Each day, McCall used a shot-tracking system to assign work based on the team’s goal of finishing three minutes of footage — or 2,160 drawings — each week. She also drew scenes and fine-tuned ones that needed fixing.
Strader and McCall worked as contractors for Austin animation studio Minnow Mountain, which specializes in rotoscope animation, used in Apollo 10 ½ and Undone. Both projects were coordinated by Rachel Dendy ’06, Minnow Mountain’s line producer, who assists the company’s co-owner in budgeting, scheduling and equipment troubleshooting. All three alumnae majored in Theater Arts, which prepared them to work in an industry that runs on collaboration and creativity.
