SOAR IN THROUGH FLLFFY SK IE S By Dustin Schandevel Sophomore Jhoel Zuniga and junior Michael Cruz started a mobile gaming cornpany together called Looper Studios on Sept. 22, 2015, hoping to use their talents to create freemium therapeutic applications. "\,Vhen we first met, we realized we had a lot of common ideas," Zuniga said. "\ \·e wanted to focus the mobile apps we made on helping people somehow." Zuniga found the desire to help others after a man inspired him, through an internship he participated in. He worked with a man who was a painter but had arthritis. Zuniga gave him a tablet device that he could paint with electronically and was impacted by the man's reaction. "I told him that he could paint with it," Zuniga said. "When he started painting, the smile and joy on his face made a new purpose in my life." Cruz said he combined Zuniga's passion with his own to launch the company. '\Vly passion was to create a big company that could invent something new and innovative that people could benefit from," Cruz said. "\Ve put our passion together and created the company." Their first app for the company was called "Fluffy Skies." Creating the app was a learning experience for them and showed them how the app market worked. It became available on Google Play and the iTunes App Store on Aug. 3, 2016. Cruz said the app was just a preview ofwhat was to come in the future. "The app is out there now for feedback - not profit," Cruz said. "We want to get established so we can proceed to bigger things." The latest project Cruz and Zuniga worked on dealt with speech pathology. Cruz said they took problems and solved them with games. Their goal was to work with different speech pathologists and clinics around the Searcy area. After graduation, they planned to continue their company while at their homes. Zuniga was from Costa Rica, while Cruz was from Belize. Since the company dealt with software development, they were able to run the company together online. Sophomore Fabiola Castellanos met Cruz and Zuniga through the Walton Scholars program. She knew they would excel together. "I couldn't think ofbetter people to start a business together," Castellanos said. "Their personalities are really different, but at the same time they match up and push each other to do better." Cruz believed that with God, anything was possible. "\Vhatever is of God, will prosper," Cruz said. "If you can be confident in that and avoid negativity, while working toward your goals, there's nothing that can stop you." Junior Michael Cruz and sophomore Jhoel Zuniga run their own business creating Android apps with the goal of therapeutically assisting those with physical conditions such as arthritis or speech im,oediments using a freemium pricing strategy which offers the main service and product for free while charging for additional features and functions. Their first app was a game called Flufjj Skies in which Fluffy, the main character whom the player embodied, tried to fly to the moon. I Photos by Julia Reinboldt
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