Motorola Spotlight Player updated, preps Moto X for ‘Duet’
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.
