Meet Amanda Schrembeck and Linda McNeil: Co-Founder of OK Motion Club

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amanda Schrembeck and Linda McNeil and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amanda/Linda, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Amanda: We follow a couple of other animation collectives and felt like it was something we could create here in Atlanta, especially since animation is such a male driven industry. Linda: We kind of started it as a way to just get out of our comfort zone and have a space to explore and grow our animation and motion design skills outside of our normal work

What should our readers know about your business?
Both: OK Motion Club is a female-run animation studio that specializes in social content. We got started in 2018 from a simple idea of wanting to create a side project for honing our skills and also an outlet for the type of work we aren’t able to do during our day jobs. Pretty quickly, we noticed a decent amount of response and interest from the Atlanta art community, and began to see the potential for OKMC becoming an actual business. I think our design and animation style is what sets us apart, which is typically hand drawn frame by frame, giving it a very approachable and personal feel. It also helps that both Linda and I got started as designers/illustrators as well as having worked in agency settings for many years. Both of those experiences gives us the knowledge for creative and social best practices. But at the end of the day, I think we’re both just trying to have fun with it. We usually try to make work that we’d want to see out in the world, and we often find that others are gravitated to it as well. I can’t say we’ve had too many challenges to overcome as of yet. We are still pretty young as an entity, so for now the most challenging thing is just keeping up with consistently posting work online. I think when you find something you’re passionate about, it doesn’t feel like work and you can make a living wage off of it, you’ve struck gold.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Amanda: Even if the pandemic was no longer around, I still tend to just hang out in my general neighborhood the most which is East Atlanta & Decatur. EAV, like everything in Atlanta, is changing but it still has it’s grungy charm and maybe some of the most affordable bars in the city. I’m also an avid concert goer, so I’d probably see if there was a show playing somewhere. The Earl, Aisle 5 and Terminal West are some of my favorite venues in the city. Linda: The Local for wings, 529 for a show, MJQ for dancing and Homegrown for the hungover breakfast. The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Amanda: My first shoutout would have to go to my parents for encouraging me to follow an art career, giving me the tools to do so, and never having any doubt that I would be successful at it. And then honestly I’m just so grateful to grow up in an age where we have access to the internet and endless sources of information for learning new skills. I’m self-taught at animation, which would’ve never been possible without easily accessible resources. Linda: A lot of what I’ve learned in my career has been by following the success of talented female leaders in the companies I’ve worked for. I feel very privileged to have these work experiences and it motivates me to keep going. I also want to shoutout to the Panimation community. It’s been such a good community to learn from other animators and to hear other peoples experiences.

Website: https://okmotionclub.bigcartel.com

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

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-schrembeck-92435766/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-mcneil-37472a99/

Other: Email: hello@okmotion.club