Happy to announce I'm one of the Developers of CanZine 2020, an annual Zine Festival by Broken Pencil that is now an online experience thanks to my Team and I at the Hand Eye Society. This online interactive festival is only available this weekend so be sure to go to http://Canzine.ca to discover more artists and buy some Zines! I hope you have a Sparktacular time!

Canzine.ca

Hey everyone,

I hope all of you have been staying safe and healthy these past few weeks. The sudden Crisis arising from this COVID-19 Pandemic has taken a toll on all of us. I've been well, as has my family, but I've taken a lot of financial losses due to this crisis.

I've toyed with the idea of asking for donations, but that doesn't sit right with me and seems selfish in this crisis. What I really want to do is help those who need help. With great crisis comes the great opportunity to do good, so I'm doing a small Charity Art Stream this Friday from 7pm - 11pm EST. Half of all proceeds will go to the UHN's Emergency COVID-19 Fund to benefit Hospitals. I'll be drawing my own work for some of the stream, but donations can include messages that suggest things to draw and, time permitting, I'll draw them. I can even send the art to those suggesting if they provide contact info.

I don't know how much to expect with this, but I'm willing to give this a shot. Whether we make $1 or $100, I'll be sending half of it to the UHN. The other half will help offset my losses. This will let you support me and our Healthcare workers and I'll be Tweeting a receipt confirming the donation afterwards. If you just want to support the UHN, by all means just donate to them directly. I will state though that I am NOT affiliated or associated with UHN, I just want to do some good in this crisis.

Our Healthcare workers are at the front lines of all this and I want to help support them however I can. I hope you'll join me at https://www.twitch.tv/supersparkplug/ tonight.

Ealier this year, I animated and released Rebuilt To Scale on Vimeo & Youtube as a loving tribute to the first minigame in Rhythm Heaven for the Nintendo DS which got me hooked on the franchise. Today, I released it on Newgrounds as I had been meaning to for much of this year and it slipped my mind.

Now imagine my surprise when I check on Newgrounds today and... It's on the front page... What?

Holy geez! Thanks Tom Fulp and the Mods who thought it was worthy enough for the front page!

Newgrounds creators inspired me to get into animation as a kid and I used to post on Newgrounds a decent bit when I first started getting into animation. That has admitedly changed as I've grown up as a full-fledged Multimedia Artist and began posting my stuff elsewhere... But I've kept uploading my occasional animations here and I've always lurked around this site to watch other people's work. My old animations racked up quite a good response in the past. I'm both surprised and thrilled to see such a still see such a great reaction to my work on NG and I wish I did this sooner. I've always loved Newgrounds and I'll definitely be making NG a priority again when I make new animations... One of which is already planned to be Rebuilt To Scale 2 in 2020.

Thanks to Rebuilt to Scale, I was also invited by the Rhythm Heaven Reanimated Crew to do a similar animation as part of their collab, so watch out for that next year too.

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If you're new to my work, welcome! I'm Jordan Sparks. I'm a Multimedia Artist, Designer, and Educator in Canada, but you can also call me your friendly neighbourhood Sparky-Man. I make art, comics, videos, animations, video games, and more. Follow me on Newgrounds to get updated on my animations. However, to be updated on my work in general, I'd definitely recommend checking out my portfolio site and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon, where I update more often. More of my work can also be found on Deviant Art. You can find all the links below!

Portfolio: http://GrindSpark.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/SuperSparkplugs

Facebook: http://facebook.com/SparkComics/

Patreon: http://patreon.com/JSparks

DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/supersparkplug

Itch.io: https://grindspark.itch.io/

2019 was a good year to me and the 2010s was easily the best decade of my entire short life. I hope everyone had a Happy Holiday Season and has a Happy New Year. Wishing you all the best in 2020.

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Update: It got Daily 9th too! Woooo!

My first new animation in a long time. A quick little animation of how I imagine President Obama might feel on the last day of his Presidency. He's had to deal with A LOT of crap...

Newgrounds: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/687594
DeviantArt: http://supersparkplug.deviantart.com/art/Obama-Out-658387199
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/200291421
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0cVibEU6RE

I haven't made a post on here in a while. I've moved on to many other things rather than making flash animations in the past few years, but I still remember starting off at Newgrounds. So what have I been up to all these years since?

For starters, I graduated Ryerson University's New Media program last week. It feels surreal. I've quite literally had the dream of going to University since I was about 3 years old and always used to tell it to people as a child and write that in those little kindergarten journals. Now I've graduated Univerity and its hard to really let that sink in, even a week later. I'm still at Ryerson for the next year seeing as I'm starting a Masters in September, but it still feels weird and it won't be the same since most of the people I knew will be gone. Guess I'm gonna have to meet new people.

I did make a new animated short about graduating called Gradvolution, so you should check that out.

Of course I'm still making comics as well on my Spark Comics website, so you should look at that too if you like.

Other than that, I've been up to a lot of things. Making comics, interactive art, games, organizing a game development club. All sorts of stuff. I'm hoping to eventually return properly to do animation, but for now I'm doing a whole bunch of things. To see more of my work over the past few years, go to my portfolio site at GrindSpark.com.

Have a Sparktacular Day! :)

Whew! I have not been on Newgrounds in a long, LONG time. I've been much too busy with other things, be it classes or my weekly webcomic on Sparkcomic.com, though since it's summer, it's mostly the latter and a few other things. In any case, I've been too busy to make any worthwhile animations as of late, which pains me since I want to make some.

In any case, I have FINALLY uploaded my most recent animation from last year, The First Day, onto Newgrounds. I've always wanted to put it on here, but I haven't really had the chance since Newgrounds didn't accept videos back then. However, thanks to Newgrounds updates and certification from the wonderful Tom Fulp, I'm now able to upload it here and I'm very proud to do so.

I hope you enjoy it, and if you like my stuff, be sure to keep up with my work at Sparkcomic.com! :)

I had a 1 minute video project due for a class a while back. Rather than film something basic like everyone else, I was stupid and wanted to do something intricate. The due date's past, but I was allowed an extension which was good since I suffered a bunch of technical issues with the film. A few days ago, I finished it and now it's finally done.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you The First Day. Featuring music by Konstantino Kapetaneas and starring the lovable Shad.

On Youtube

On Vimeo

Well, my first two weeks of University are over. Ryerson seems like a pretty awesome place. I'm having alot of fun, I met alot of great people and made some friends and my classes are awesome. People say University is scary and alot of hard work and while the latter is true, I don't find it scary at all.

My lectures are pretty awesome all around. The Profs are all nice and their classes are unique and interesting. My Art History and Concepts and Theories classes are fun because the topics are intellectually stimulating and we end up watching videos half the time. My first Art History class was last Monday (We didn't have it the first week because Monday was labour day) and we talked about Plato's Allegory of the Cave and then we ended up watching The Matrix for half an hour to compare that concept. It's really never a dull moment. My Concept and Theories classes are fun too. We end up watching a bunch of movie clips. Last week we ended up watching an old movie, La Jetee, and part of Man with the Movie Camera, among other movie clips.

My other classes are Intro to Media and Research for Experiential Media. Both classes are interesting and look promising. Intro to Media is pretty much a production class. Our first class explained our outline while the 2nd class explained safety. I had to do a WHMIS safety test (Which seems kinda stupid since we know not to blow s*** up) which was really annoying but we ended up getting a lecture on that on Wednesday's class which had to be the longest, funniest safety lecture EVER. We learned about the type of equipment we were going to be using which was cool and gave me some ideas. My Research for Experiential Media class was interesting. We have to make a blog and post about things such as our Digital Footprint and Digital Identity, which involves searching ourselves on Google. Finding myself on Google was a NIGHTMARE. Despite the fact that my name is JORDAN Sparks, people write Jordin Sparks' name the same way even though it's clearly not spelled that way. I had to search 19 Google Search Pages while using Advanced Settings just to find ONE thing about myself and that was a blog post I made on my Newgrounds account reviewing Scott Pilgrim Vs The World because my name was in the title of the post. Finding SuperSpark and SuperSparkplug haven't been that much of a problem but the former still doesn't show up on the first page because it turns out there's a minor food critic with the same username. I have to find someway to get my usernames to the top of the list.

My last class is Pop Literature, which is my Liberal Study for the Semester. It's very interesting and I love to read, but I hate being forced to read everything by a certain time. I have to read half of Dracula by Monday and while it's a good book, it drags alot. I have no classes on Friday, Saturday or Sunday so I have a long weekend every week. Plus, I have almost no morning classes (I have one class that starts at 11AM) and all my classes are finished by 6PM. Life is good.

I should probably be reading Dracula right now instead of procrastinating by writing this post. Bye for now!

P.S. This is too awesome for words!

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Those who know me know that I am a huge Scott Pilgrim fan. Ever since I got into the series in May 2009 I have awaited the 6th and final book and it totally blew me away. I loved the last volume and got it signed by Bryan Lee O'Malley himself at the Midnight Release Party. However, I've also been longing for the movie adaptation to finally come out. I was originally skeptical about Scott Pilgrim becoming a movie. It doesn't seem like something that would translate well to film. In comes director Edgar Wright to save the day and he made this film into a true masterpiece.

Based on the independent graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley, the movie begins much like the book... Almost EXACTLY like the beginning of the graphic novel. Only real exception is that Scott is 22 instead of 23 but that's irrelevant. The beginning of the movie and up to the first 3 evil-ex fights are pretty much pulled straight out of the comic with a few movie twists of its own that are hilarious! Starting with the 4th Evil Ex, however, Edgar Wright pretty much takes the source material and, while it's still very faithful to the book, puts his own big twists in it so that this isn't just taken from the comic its also his own thing. Usually when this happens it isn't good, but Wright manages to make this all great and epic and makes me think that its mostly better than if this was taken frame by frame from the book. All of the scenes and villains are very unique and Scott and Co. are hilarious. Since this was filmed before the 6th volume came out (I think it was filmed around the time Vol 5 was released but I think extra scenes were filmed after Vol.6 was finished), the ending and how it is quite different. However, it's still a very satisfying joyride. My only real gripe is that the characters of Katanagi Twins and their fight was entirely different than they were in the graphic novel, but I won't complain because what they did with it was pretty amazing in its own right.

Overall, I thought this was an AMAZING movie! In a world where The Last Airbender actually exists (I FUCKING HATE THAT MOVIE WITH THE PASSION OF A MILLION AND MORE SUNS) Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is a huge beacon of movie hope! I recommend EVERYONE to go see this movie. Some people may not get the story or any of the references but I'm sure anybody can appreciate this movie and get a good laugh out of it! I will be sure to go see this movie at least one more time when I get the chance!!!

Hey everyone (if anyone reads this), I made a Scott Pilgimage, as people have been calling them, to the Beguiling on Monday for the Scott Pilgrim Release Party for Volume 6.

There were so many people there at least over a thousand on that crowded street and there were people cosplaying as Scott Pilgrim characters. My friends that I was going with all ditched me on last Saturday so I knew I was going by myself which wasn't that fun. I stayed in line for hours to get the book and an autograph until my aunt came by after her nursing job to keep me company. I met this guy there beside me in line who was pretty cool. I remember his name (I think) but I don't know how to spell it, which sucks. It was almost 2 AM by the time we got my book and the book I bought for my friend on vacation signed by Bryan Lee O'Malley the author of Scott Pilgrim.

What was totally awesome was that, after he signed my book, I gave him a print out of that last comic I did (The 4th Spark Comic called "You want me to do what?!") And he recognized it from the internet which was amazing!!! I guess he found it on my Deviant Art when I put it in that Scott Pilgrim group. That made my night!

I read Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour Volume 6 while I was in line. A truly epic concluding chapter in a truly epic series! The ending was very fitting but personally I didn't like it since it just wasn't that concrete of an ending for me. Oh well it ended nicely nonetheless and all the characters were given proper goodbyes.

Later next week, I'm going on vacation. I'll try to do some animating when I'm gone and maybe start one of the two new full-length Shad projects I've wanted to do once I've finished my next test animation.