Joe Sparks

Joe Sparks is an American video game developer, animator, songwriter, web publisher, and multimedia consultant from San Francisco, California. He is also a loving husband and father of his two children: Maxim Sparks and Samuel Sparks, and his wife Johanan Sparks.

He is best known for his Flash animation and video games. His Radiskull and Devil Doll cartoons were an internet craze in 2000-2001. His pioneering games Total Distortion and the classic Mac adventure game Spaceship Warlock won much acclaim.

Career

Joe Sparks was an early employee of Paracomp, which had become Macromedia in 1992. He left to found Pop Rocket, which produced the critically acclaimed video game Total Distortion, to moderate success. Pop Rocket folded in 1995, with Sparks returning to Macromedia in 1997 as a creative developer.

Sparks was instrumental in the formation and lasting success of shockwave.com, most especially because of the popularity of Radiskull and Devil Doll. He created all the graphics, programming, and animation, as well as wrote and recorded all the music.

Joe Sparks (baseball)

Joseph Everett Sparks (born March 15, 1938, at McComas, West Virginia) is a retired American professional baseball player, manager, coach and scout. A former infielder in the minor leagues, Sparks batted left-handed, threw right-handed, stood 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and weighed 195 pounds (88 kg) during his active career.

Sparks managed in minor league baseball for all or part of 20 seasons (1970–78; 1980–83; 1986–88; 1991–94) in the farm systems of the Chicago White Sox, Houston Astros, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Royals, Montreal Expos and Detroit Tigers and compiled a career won/loss mark of 1,330–1,247 (.516). From 1986–88, he won three consecutive American Association championships while at the helm of the Indianapolis Indians, then Montreal's top affiliate. He also won the championship of the Class A Northern League in 1970, his maiden season as a manager.

Sparks served one-year coaching terms in Major League Baseball with the White Sox (1979), Cincinnati Reds (1984), Expos (1989) and New York Yankees (1990), and was an advance scout for the St. Louis Cardinals for eight seasons (1996–2003). He then served in the same role for the Oakland Athletics.