Meet Alyssa Evensen | Character Artist

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

Hi Alyssa, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
You could always catch me gaming with my sister growing up and my little sister when she was born. With games we could explore other places and tackle real life problems despite what the world threw at us. Seeing the characters on the screen would really push me through in my work and inspire me to do better. However, the thought of making my own characters wasn’t really there until one of my professors, Ryan Bown, at the University of Utah said “Do you really wanna spend 40hrs+ a week on something you hate” and that gave me that boost I needed to pursue character art and the rest was history!

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I would say my life experiences have offered me a unique opportunity into shaping my art to what it is today and to what it will be tomorrow. It was not easy to get to where I am today and I imagine it won’t be easy to get to where I want to go, but I have always worked hard. I would spend ungodly amounts of time each week on my work to improve, but I would never stray from my responsibilities. I think it was because of those responsibilities that helped ground me and helped me toward producing the art I want to pursue. This lead me to create many styles of pieces both stylized and realistic and while to many it might look like I can’t decide on what I want to do, these pieces are shaping my skills and my work exactly to where I want to go. I hope that one day everyone will be able to see why I am doing what I am doing, but until then I will try my best with each piece to showcase my knowledge and my joy that I have in my work.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Luckily, I have had many friends to show around and have many ideas on what fun things we could do. Therefore, if my bestie came by for the week I would say first I would invite her someplace tasty! A place she may not be used to that I know she would love if she gave me the chance. Then someplace fun, where we could play games and joke around. From there a calm or beautiful place like a garden or a quirky art show. Sneak some more tasty food in and then finish the week off with an escape room or a team event where we could trash talk each other as we try and work together to get to the end!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My twin sister Nicole is definitely a huge part of me as we quite literally grew up together from the very start. When she stopped being able to play tennis with me, I looked for ways we could enjoy things together. However, it was difficult with my parents forcing me towards engineering on top of all the responsibilities I had at home and at school. There were times I felt like I was drowning from all the pressure and despite what my sister and I were both going through we still talked and drew. She did animation for a bit which help me push me to look at other parts of engineering such as computer science which in turn introduced me to game art classes.
Some of those classes we took together and would joke about them as the world kept turning around us. Despite all the crap that was thrown at us we still got through and I think it was our love of games and love for each other that helped ground us.
The world though did break through and there was a time we held resentment towards each other. Our problems broke us, and I wondered what I should do and if I had made the wrong decision to do these art classes when my main focus should be engineering as it was more stable and could help provide money. I felt dead inside, and nothing mattered.
We had our own paths at the time and went through them separately. Time passed and things got a bit better, but the rift was still there. It was honestly time apart and games that brought our relationship back. We played Pokémon, Animal Crossing and many others that slowly helped heal what we both had gone through. The scar remains but games were like a string to help sew our relationship together again. From there we could communicate and start joking once more.
Then when I finally did go into art, I was a bit more prepared for the work that lay ahead. She really helped encourage me and inspire me to progress. Even though I am still learning, and there are times we don’t see eye to eye she continues to help push me in the right direction and I know despite everything she will always be in my corner.

Website: https://alyssaevensen.com

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssaevensen

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