Meet Rachel McAlister | Character Designer & Voice Actor for Animation

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rachel McAlister and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I don’t actually have a private self-owned business. I work as a character designer and voice actor for animation and work with studios on a project to project basis.

I had always known that I loved and had a passion for both drawing and for learning about people and what makes them who they are. I also really loved acting when I was younger and was very excited by the process of getting inside the mind of a character and developing them from the inside out. I went to my undergrad trying to figure out how I could incorporate those things into a career and in my last semester discovered character design for animation. In character design I could take the words and information given about a character and design how those words would inform how the character would look and how they would move and act. I was not a strong enough artist to get hired at that point so I went to grad school to learn how to make that dream a reality. I got my first job in animation in 2016 and along the way realized that I had another dream that I still wanted to achieve. Although designing characters incorporates the same process that an actor would use in developing a character I realized that I not only wanted to tell the character’s story visually with my drawings but I wanted to tell their story with my voice as well and so I began pursuing voice acting in 2022.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Working in animation definitely is not an easy thing to achieve. The field is very competitive and it can be difficult to have your job be to create something that is essentially a mirror of you and how your brain works and then put it out there to be critiqued. But I try to remind myself that when it works out and you hear from people that your work made them laugh or smile or even cry it is truly an amazing feeling. My hope is that by making content that people connect to I can make their day a little better and maybe give them something that they can connect with other people on and maybe make the world a little bit happier and a little bit less lonely, even if on a microscopic level.

I like to focus my work as much as possible on that desire to connect with everyday people. I get tired of seeing the same kinds of people over and over again in media. Personally I like to celebrate the uniqueness that we see in the world. When it comes to design you typically see a lot of women with heart shaped faces, very slim perfectly proportioned hour glass figures with big eyes and pouty lips, and tall men with lean physiques, and squared jawlines. It can feel like you’re just looking at the same characters over and over with a different wig and costume on. And there definitely are people who look like that in the world. But there are so many others and putting them in more media not only makes a richer and more interesting world, it helps people who don’t see themselves in these cliche Hollywood characters feel seen. So I like to pull from normal everyday people as much as possible and incorporate and celebrate those features that set them apart and make them distinct.

When it comes to voice acting I like to bring a similar uniqueness to my characters. I love playing characters who are a bit more complex or that have contradicting traits, like a prize winning physicist who happens to also be a valley girl teen, or a mob boss who talks like Dolly Parton. I also love taking characters that can be very generic or surface level and come at them from a different angle with little specificities and idiosyncrasies and make them a little more off beat from what people would typically expect.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from designing and voicing characters is that you have to have fun. The way I see it my job is making little people puzzles where I pull from a pile of attributes and quirks and mix them together until they fit. Finding how they fit together and still feel authentic can be very challenging, but it is so much fun and I truly love what I do.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Honestly I wouldn’t be a great tour guide. I’m very much a homebody and don’t go out on a lot of adventures. Whenever I visit any city though I love seeing if they have a natural history museum and LA has a great one! I love learning about different animals and cultures throughout history and personally it is a great place to go as an artist. It’s awesome for people watching because of the variety of tourists and locals who come to visit and there are so many amazing displays that can inspire you. Plus you get to learn cool facts at the same time. It’s a win win.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The first one would be my family. My parents are both retired doctors and teachers and I am often asked if that meant they didn’t approve when I said I wanted to work as an artist. You do often hear stories like that, but they were very supportive even though they didn’t and probably still don’t really understand how my industry works.

Then I’d say those that I have met and loved in the animation community. I’ve been working in it since 2016 and the vast majority of people I have met have been so open and friendly and are always excited to cheer others on. It can be an extremely stressful job but I am so grateful to work in an industry where people want to foster fun and positive working environments.

And last I’d shoutout my close friends and my cats. A job like this can be unpredictable and have lots of ups and downs and the world in general has had lots of those these past few years. I’m so grateful to them for sticking by me and keeping my head above water in the most chaotic times.

Website: https://rachelmcalister.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chuchuboogie/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-mcalister-10977120/

Image Credits
n/a