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One of the cooler features of the Motorola Moto X is Motorola’s Spotlight Stories, which are short animated films designed specifically for mobile consumption. Motorola (well, technically now they’re Google ATAP) puts software engineers together with award winning directors and animators to bring fully immersive and interactive short stories to their Moto X line. The Motorola Spotlight Player app has been updated to bring the team’s latest creation to Moto X users, named Duet. The latest story features hand-drawn animations from Disney animation legend Glen Keane.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Duet though. In fact, it’s been quite a while since we got our first look at Duet back at Google IO in June. During the Google ATAP presentation, Regina Dugan noted that part of the reason behind Duet was not only that Glen wanted to draw again, but they were hoping to breathe life into an art form that is almost lost. Glen Keane retired in March 2012 after being at Disney for 38 years.
Transforming Glen’s art form into a beautiful finished product was no easy task for the team. Glen’s animations are drawn on paper with a graphite pencil and in 2D, where he is able to do something that no mathematical encoding or rendering engine can accomplish. Glen’s animations truly come to life as they age and grow in a seamless fashion. To achieve this task, Glen had to draw with mobile devices in mind at 60 frames per second, which is much higher than the 24 frames per second he was used to. If any pixelation occurs, the true message and art form are lost. The end result would produce 10,055 separate drawings taking up 13.5GB of storage space. Motorola was able to compress that down to just 150MB for our viewing pleasure.
Since Duet is marked as coming soon in the Spotlight Player app or if you don’t own a Moto X, we recommend watching the sneak peak of Duet below to tide you over. Let us know in the comments what you think.
Why this app is incompatible with my Droid Turbo is beyond me. It’s running almost the same exact OS as the more “pure” Moto phones, yet the Play Store claims my Droid is incompatible.
Because Motorola wants it to be a Moto X exclusive
Ah…that’s kinda lame if you ask me. That leaves out all us DT and Nex 6 owners.
You could say that really for any phone specific feature though. This one just so happens to be awesome and not some unneeded bloatware.
It’s not really a specific feature of the Moto X though. It’s an app available in the store. I’d understand if it were something like a keyboard or camera that’s only designed to work with very specific hardware, but Moto’s devices are all very similar, I doubt it’d be too difficult to allow this to work on other Moto phones.
Did you see that Google retained the team behind this and they ARE starting to bring these to more phones? The next one is live action.
EDIT: Here’s a link talking about it. So awesome! https://medium.com/backchannel/google-taps-hollywood-a-list-for-360-interactive-short-b36e7fb35b5f
Live action sounds very interesting. Thanks for the link.
And apparently only moto x (2014) my original moto x is “not compatible with this version”
I have both the original Moto X and the 2014 Moto X, the application works fine for me. Could it be a country issue?
shouldnt be..I’m in the grand ol USA
I could not disable this Spotlight app fast enough. So annoying.
Odd. I absolutely love this feature. My kids love it too! Each to their own.
I could not keep mine enabled fast enough. So great!
I have duet as coming soon on my Moto G XT1045, so it also works in US versions of Moto G i guess?
Moto G 4G (XT1045 & XT1039) has a gyroscope that is required for spotlight player thats why it has it.
ah makes sense, although they should enable it for phones without as you can still watch with some finger intervention :D
I think it is beautiful! I love it!
Spoiler alert!! Dumbledore dies at the end
I just saw Duet….Awesomee
1 version with boy 2 version with girl.. Visual treat,,:)
It arrived at midnight!
Beautiful work ^__^
As a window into an imaginary world, but not really comparable to augmented reality, Spotlight Stories is a nice mix of 3D animation, absurd situations and technology.
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