HIIT Potato

Purpose

Drew a potato performing each of the 10 exercises in the Spartacus HIIT workout (a circuit made famous by the show's cast training program), then animated them in Flutter. The result: a workout companion app where a potato demonstrates your next exercise. Part timer, part tutorial, part absurdist art project.

Stack

What I Learned

• The Spartacus workout is a 10-exercise HIIT circuit: goblet squats, mountain climbers, single-arm dumbbell swings, T-pushups, split jumps, dumbbell rows, dumbbell side lunges, pushup-position rows, dumbbell lunges, and dumbbell push press. Each exercise performed for 60 seconds with 15 seconds rest. Three rounds. Drawing a potato doing each of these required understanding the movement well enough to capture the key frames — which is itself a form of studying exercise form.
• Hand-drawing each animation frame and then importing them as sprite sheets is a workflow that connects the physical and digital creative process. Sketchbook → scanner/camera → image cleanup → sprite sheet → Flame animation. The potato's personality comes from the imperfection of the hand-drawn lines — machine-perfect vector art would not have the same charm.
• Fitness apps with character mascots that demonstrate exercises are a genuine UX pattern — apps like Nike Training Club and Peloton use human demonstrations, but animated characters (like Ring Fit Adventure's Ring) lower the intimidation factor and add delight. A potato doing burpees is inherently less intimidating than a fitness model doing burpees. The absurdity is the accessibility.
• This project, like Potato Pounder, demonstrates that the Potatuhs brand can absorb any domain: fitness, games, literature, music, merchandise. The potato is not the product. The potato is the lens through which any product becomes distinctly Potatuhs.

Key Insights

• Drawing 10 exercises × multiple frames per exercise is a significant art investment for a side project. But the drawings become permanent brand assets — usable on the website, in marketing, on merchandise, in other apps. The HIIT Potato drawings could appear on a Potatuhs t-shirt, in a Potato Literature fitness haiku book, or as stickers. Art created for one project compounds across the ecosystem.
• The Spartacus workout as a source is clever because it has built-in searchability — people google "Spartacus workout" regularly. An app or content piece attached to a known workout routine gets organic discovery that a generic "potato fitness app" would not. Attaching your content to existing search demand is a form of SEO that works for apps the same way it works for web pages.
• Fun projects that serve no business purpose are the soul of the Potatuhs brand. Not everything needs a revenue model. Not everything needs a user acquisition strategy. Sometimes a potato does mountain climbers because it is funny, and the funniness is the entire point. Brands that only do what is profitable lose the playfulness that made people care in the first place.