ABOUT

Hello, I am Tessa McEvoy (24 years). I was born in Yangzhou, China, but came to the United States as a baby. I have gravitated towards art and design since childhood. I started my first award winning business, “Outside The Box Crafts” selling origami boxes at age 8. During my free time, I continue to spend hours illustrating, developing original characters, and storyboarding new ideas. I have an insatiable need to create.

I found myself in the social media freelance industry in 2015 when I started playing online games in high school, specifically Habbo Hotel, a somewhat vintage online community development game. Quickly I discovered that I needed Coins (in game currency) to design my hotel rooms. I ended up illustrating people’s Habbo characters. I was paid in Habbo coins. My online entrepreneurship expanded from there.

I also networked with The Mars Generation, a non-profit that helps low-income children attend Space Camp USA. The founder, Astronaut Abby (Abigail Harrison) asked if I could illustrate their fund-raising book, “Color Me Mars Generation.” I included my original character, Jess of Space Cadet Wannabe, in the storyline. This was an award-winning piece of work. I was then asked to be a keynote speaker at the 2018 International Manufacturing and Technology Summit (biggest manufacturing conference in North America) in their youth summit division.

By late high school, my interest in design had emerged separate from my illustration and cartooning interests. It began with an interest in the digital design in slot machine graphics (I do love strong colors and lines). This led me to a community of people who loved slot machines (yes, there is a large “slot machine community”). I fell in love with slot machine design process. It got to know influencers within the industry and major game manufacturers. One of the biggest YouTubers within the industry asked me to work for them. I also did side projects for many smaller influencers. That is where I learned social media content production and YouTube analytics.

During this time, I was also in college. I am graduating from The University of Denver Colorado as a digital design major Spring 2025