Sparky the Shark

Tell a little bit about you and your company

Biscuit Interactive® is a design, web and interactive studio located in Australia, 1hr from Melbourne, owned and operated for over 11 years by my wife Paula and I. Paula and I are responsible for all innovation, design, development and production work created in the Biscuit studio. A small but formidable creative duo.

I have worked full time in the Graphic Design industry for over 17 years. Before starting Biscuit® in 2000, I worked on character development with Mars Confectionery (including the famous M&M characters) as well as with many significant brands in Australia and overseas. I have always thrived on technology-driven disciplines of web development, flash animation, 3D modeling/digital illustration, and I am equally at home with traditional art and design.

What is the “Sparky” about?

Sparky the Shark – A Frighteningly Funny Adventure, is an interactive storybook for children including 33 vibrant illustrations, interactive sound and animation, ambient music and a whole bag full of laughs.

In “A Frighteningly Funny Adventure” Sparky, a friendly vegetarian shark sets off to discover Magneto Island, an Island close to his underwater home. Decked out with his own special water breathing bubble (invented by his brainy penguin friend Dax) they embark on a belly-laughing escapade to find Sparky a “friendlier”, more acceptable identity, so people won’t fear him. Along the way, Sparky learns that he just has to be himself in order to be happy. Join Sparky on this frighteningly funny adventure as he searches for acceptance, despite his scary teeth.

Sparky the Shark has been more than 15 years in the making and only until a couple of years ago did I feel that Sparky had to be brought to life through electronic devices. I was responsible for most of the creative work and vision including: Character development, characterizations, illustrations, storyline and plot, animations and interactivity, sounds and music, production and graphic design. I was also responsible for all the App development using Kwik and Corona.

Any favorite features?

I love the path animations and the ability to add random actions.

My favorite feature is the Kwik’s Sprite Sheet Exporter. When we create animation frames in photoshop or any other app I always use this feature to make sure my sprite sheets are created perfect.

Any trick/tip you would like to share?

MOST Important ( back up, back up, backup ) your entire projects between major changes.

To make editing and modifications easier always, always name every layer and kwik action with a common naming conventions. Yes the icons in Kwik to a great job of telling what each action type is but if you name items based on what they are actually doing then you will know what to change if a problem occurs.

Also if you plan on including a game or something “not written in Kwik” I still created a place holder page to be exported, which included the swipe and navigation buttons, this made it simple for me to integrate my game in its’ place.

What is your overall experience with us (product and services)?

Love it and plan on using it forever, We are already planning two more book / apps to be built with Kwik

What is next for you and your company?

We are actually working on a couple more projects right now, as well as starting another kwik app.
Since Kwik will export the images for both IPhone and IPad resolutions we can still use Kwik for rapid prototyping for screen layout and image sizes, this makes it much easier to help create a proof of concept app for ourselves and others.