Stream Archive: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/636100113

http://Twitch.tv/SuperSparkplug

Last Friday, I had the honor of hosting the Spark Comic Jam with my friends Mystayre, Jiayi, and OkappiXV sponsored by the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Due to COVID-19, TCAF was cancelled this year, but instead they partnered with other Comic Arts Festivals across Canada under the #CanCAF. My colleague, Len Predko, connected me with TCAF staff who was looking for online events. As an artist that just started seriously streaming, I saw this as the perfect time to start my own Comic Jam as an online event: The Spark Comic Jam. These pages are the results of our Jam on Twitch.

Comic Jams are a fun collaborative format where one person starts a comic and then leaves it for anybody to continue the story however they see fit, resulting in an unpredictable tale by multiple creators. As you can see, it resulted in many strange stories for us. It’s a unique format I was introduced to by a community groups in my University days. It’s not very well known, but comic jams have been happening in small communities and collectives all over the world for decades.

I wanted to do this Comic Jam for 3 reasons. First, it’s been a goal of mine to head a comic jam for several years, albeit in a different form, but could never complete one for a variety of reasons and this was an opportunity to do this shelved concept. Second, Comic Jams aren’t very well known, even amongst artist circles, so I wanted to raise awareness of this fun format. And finally, I wanted to promote and support my friends, who are awesome artists in their own right. Glad I was able to reach those goals.

I had a lot of fun directing, organizing, and producing the Spark Comic Jam. It was challenging to prepare for and difficult to both draw and manage the technology at the same time, but I learned a lot and created a fun art experience with my friends that our audience enjoyed. Maybe I’ll do this again someday, but for now I’m very proud of what we accomplished.

I highly recommend following my friends and their work. Thanks to TCAF for supporting our online event.

Mystayre: https://twitter.com/mystayre

Jiayi: https://twitter.com/artricahearts

OkappiXV: https://twitter.com/tamamonokama

TCAF: http://torontocomics.com