Nicholas Sparger

Happy Birthday, Lea! Here are some photos of the incomparable Lea Cawthorne I snagged while visiting NY back in March. A year ago, we were getting to know each other at the Lago Skiathos arts residency in Greece, and ever since, it’s been such a treat building up a truly wonderful creative partnership

Mummified Me (or This Filmmaker After 1000 Hours of Editing) Been a second since I posted! Here are some nice images of my not-scary-whatsoever mummy prop of myself that I made back in November for a short film I still need to finish!

King Kong (1933) Colorized - Kong vs. Planes on Empire State Building Update on my remaster of Turner Home Entertainment's 1989 colorization of "King Kong" Over the last few years after my intial colorization test of the T. rex fight, I've pursued the idea of reimagining Ted Turner's entire "King Kong in Color" in high definition using the 2K scan of the original black and white film in conjunction with a Laserdisc—the best version available—of Turner's team's work, which I had scanned to the highest fidelity possible using a Domesday Duplicator. By meticulously lining up every shot between both versions of the film (a process which has taken me months), adding extra color dimension by layering (at very low-opacity) DeOldify's colorization of the material, adding motion blur and pan-and-scan for a "wider" aspect ratio (I lose a good amount of the original image from this—sorry), and upscaling to 4K using the Topaz Labs Video Enhance suite, I've created a fun new way to experience the film. Since this process will still take months to complete, I wanted to share a seminal sequence of the film that I have fully completed. Like I mentioned in my original colorization experiment back in 2023, this is by no means "better" than the original 1933 film's presentation. As an artist, technician, and fan of monster cinema, it's fun to play around with these creations to see what new joys can be conjured. #kingkong #merianccooper #willisobrien #colorization #kingkongincolor #tedturner

01.04.26 | Long View Blue Ambs and I visited Longview Lake today and grabbed some photos by the shore. A local man named Christian pointed out old roads that had been submerged after the dam was built years ago, and he helped us find some neat shots!

2025 | I’m Trying to Thrive As I hoped for by the end of ‘24, I continued being open to shifts in time. Though I didn’t get accepted to any grad programs I applied to, I did get into an arts residency in Greece, which was a hard reset on my prior life of malaise and absence of drive. The deep bonds I made with fellow artists forged a new lease on life, and I had the will to create some wild new work back home, such as an award-winning Ultraman cosplay and an in-progress short film exploring my new interests in video archive! Connection—emotionally, physically, spiritually—has been a prominent theme of the year, making existence feel even more alive. I deeply love this planet I inhabit with all of you, and that is why I am so passionate about societal change beyond stagnation. Community, formed through connection, is key to growing beyond our complacency to the self-serving interests of the 1%, the corporations, the capitalists who rip apart Earth for the last drop of honey from our beehive. As always, I proclaim: say no to imperialism, say no to genocide, say no to sickness, to greed, to thinking only of ourselves. As the world burns up, we must think of each other to survive. With that, a cheers, a ganbei, a yamas and gëzuar to 2025!

12.31.25 | Last Day Play at O’Day Caught up with Ally this New Year’s Eve, and as always, we did a little photoshoot, this time at O’Day Park, which offered some playful shapes and spaces for the lens! #photography #portraitphotography #helioslens

12.19.2025 | Naired Nick I haven’t posted on my main feed in a while, so here’s a quick sketch of me if I had no hair!

King Karate (1987) - "It's the way of the New World" Recently, I have been incredibly invested in archiving old family videos and other media, working primarily with VHS tapes. One of these is a short film my dad and friends made in early college while working at a video rental store. The tape had degradated quite a bit over the last 38 years, so traditional video capture devices couldn't quite cut it. I bought some higher-end prosumer equipment from Japan as well as a Super-VHS VCR to get the best quality that I could, and I processed the 480 interlaced video into HD 60fps progressive video, cleaning up artifacts that appear on tape over time. Ultimately, I'm quite proud of how this turned out, bringing new life to a nearly four-decade-old tape. #vhs #videoarchive #retro #videostore #vhsrestoration

08.23.25 | Waiting for Q[uilting] Photos of Lea (and the platform) as we waited for the Q train before going to their quilting workshop last Saturday while I was in Brooklyn.

I like this guy, and thus I’ll post him! #godzilla #sketch

08.02.25 | T. rex Forest Test Using my walk cycle test animation from a while back, I was able to finally track my T. rex into a shot I took last year after toying with some new camera tracking software! #visualeffects #vfx #blender #trex #dinosaur #animation

08.01.2025 | Happy, Birthday And thus I am a quarter of a century, 25 years old, a square number. But no longer am I square. Perhaps I am something else…