Duet is an interactive animated story. It is a synthesis of the most ground breaking virtual world technology and the most ancient of all art forms—drawing. From the beginning of this project we knew it would be a celebration of life through line. The entire production was a creative adventure. We are a small team of artists and programmers working together to accomplish the charge of ATAP’s Regina Dugan set before us. “I want you to make something beautiful and emotional,” she said. “You push yourself creatively and that will push us technologically.”

Duet is a love story between two characters, Mia and Tosh, whose paths cross throughout their lives. Different than the traditional linear story, Duet employs a multi-layered approach that could best be described as a double helix in which the characters’ story arcs literally spiral around one another. Figuring all of this out was enough to make our collective heads spin! Fortunately we were blessed with an incredible ATAP team of technical engineers led by Rachid El Guerrab. The artistic half of our creative suite was led by our producer Gennie Rim and Production Designer Max Keane. Together, my assistant Sarah Airriess and I drew over 10,000 drawings to create the animation for Duet.

Again and again, we were surprised by the freedom this interactive storytelling provided. Jan Pinkava, who pioneered and directed the first Spotlight Story, “Windy Day”, continually encouraged us to put the camera into the hands of the audience. However this is not an easy or natural thing for a filmmaker to do. The tendency is to want to control the visual composition, but with Duet we learned to coax rather than control. Because of the nature of this virtual world technology there were no individual shots cut together. It is all one continuous living moment. I think of it less as a traditional film and more as a visual poem.

Our music composer, Scot Stafford, may have had the greatest challenge of all. Not only was he tasked with creating an emotional score, but it also needed to respond at any moment to the viewers' choice and seamlessly switch themes from one character to the other. Duet is in every way a partnership between the visual and the musical.

Throughout my 40 year career as an animator I have benefitted each time new technology crossed my path because it invariably forced me to become a better artist. In a similar way, Duet has stretched all of us creatively who worked on it.

We have learned that when it comes to storytelling, everything is possible. There still remains so much more to discover.

We are thrilled to share Duet with you today.

Glen Keane
Director / Animator of Duet

Editor's note: We made a mistake in earlier version of our blogpost when it said "Duet" would be supported on Moto G (2nd gen.). Unfortunately, that was incorrect. It is currently only supported on Moto X (1st and 2nd gen.) and Moto G 4G LTE. We're very sorry for getting that wrong.

A phone should be as unique as you are—not only in the design of your device, but how you use it. Last year at the All Things D “D11” conference, Regina Dugan talked about new digital tattoo technology that would make it easier to unlock your phone. Now the moment is here: We’re excited to see this new technology brought to life for Moto X by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group and VivaLnk Inc.

Last year, on October 29th, we introduced the world to a mouse, a hat and a little windy trouble brought to life by immersive storytelling technology. That was the first Spotlight Story. It was called Windy Day.

Ready for another story? It might be the same forest, but things are definitely different once the sun goes down.


Continuing our work with award-winning storytellers, Buggy Night was directed by veteran animator Mark Oftedal along with much of the Windy Day team, including Caldecott winning illustrator and writer Jon Klassen and Academy award-winning producer Karen Dufilho-Rosen.

With each Spotlight Story we’re uncovering more ground -- both technologically and creatively. We’re continuing to explore novel storytelling possibilities for mobile. Possibilities that are revealed when mobile is considered a true medium, rather than just a smaller screen. We’re finding out what happens at the intersection of hardware, software, and content.

Technologically, Buggy Night takes interactivity and immersiveness to the next level. For this story, we created seamless interactivity by leveraging Android 4.4 KitKat graphics capabilities applied to a true 360-degree environment. Creatively, this meant that we had to tell a story that unfolds where you choose to look -- and where you don’t.
Keep an eye on your Moto X and see what happens when your phone catches the latest Spotlight bug going around.

If you missed our first Spotlight Story, Windy Day, you can check it out in the new Library section of Spotlight Player. And to keep up to date on all things Spotlight Stories, follow our Tumblr or join our Google+ Community.

Posted by Rachid El-Guerrab, Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP)

To animate means to bring to life.

Glen Keane’s work seems larger than life. As the creator and animator of beloved Disney characters such as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and Tarzan, Glen has drawn more than figures on a screen. He has made the stories and characters of our childhoods. He gave us imaginary friends, admired heroines, misfits in search of understanding, and at least a Halloween costume or two.

At Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, we believe in the power of storytelling, so we’re building new stories made specifically for mobile. Not stories made for the big screen but shown on a small one. Not flat content. We’re building interactive, immersive stories made for your smartphone.

So we’re excited to announce that Glen—the artist behind so many classics—is working with us to push the future of animation with an original Spotlight Story.

Expected to release the middle of 2014, in this third Motorola Spotlight Story, Glen is going back to the drawing board. Literally. Together with the engineers who unlocked the graphics technology that made our first Spotlight Story, Windy Day, possible on the Moto X, we’re pushing new edges. The raw emotion of the hand-drawn line brought to life in our technological world. And yours.

What will happen when a master animator of the big screen jumps to an innovative, mobile canvas? We’re excited to see.
Posted by Baback Elmieh, Technical Program Lead, Advanced Technologies and Project (ATAP)

Over the last six months, our MAKEwithMOTO team took Sticky, a truck wrapped entirely in velcro and filled with rooted, hackable Motorola smartphones and high-end 3D printing equipment, across the country for a series of make-a-thons. On that trip we saw the first signs of a new, open hardware ecosystem made possible by advances in additive manufacturing and access to the powerful computational capabilities of modern smartphones. These included new devices and applications that we could never have imagined from inside our own labs. Open fuels innovation. See some examples here, here, and here.

After the trip, we asked ourselves, how do we bring the benefits of an open hardware ecosystem to 6 billion people?

Meet Ara.

Led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.

Our goal is to drive a more thoughtful, expressive, and open relationship between users, developers, and their phones. To give you the power to decide what your phone does, how it looks, where and what it’s made of, how much it costs, and how long you’ll keep it.

Here’s a sneak peek at early designs for Project Ara:

The design for Project Ara consists of what we call an endoskeleton (endo) and modules.  The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!

We’ve been working on Project Ara for over a year. Recently, we met Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks. Turns out we share a common vision: to develop a phone platform that is modular, open, customizable, and made for the entire world. We’ve done deep technical work. Dave created a community. The power of open requires both.  So we will be working on Project Ara in the open, engaging with the Phonebloks community throughout our development process, as well as asking questions to our Project Ara research scouts (volunteers interested in helping us learn about how people make choices). In a few months, we will also send an invitation to developers to start creating modules for the Ara platform (to spice it up a bit, there might be prizes!). We anticipate an alpha release of the Module Developer’s Kit (MDK) sometime this winter.

So stay tuned. There will be a lot more coming from us in the next few months.

--Paul Eremenko, and the Motorola Advanced Technology and Projects group, Project Ara Team

Thirty-nine. That’s the number of times the typical person unlocks their smartphone each day. For power users it’s closer to a hundred times per day. At 2.3 seconds each time the phone is unlocked, it adds up to a lot of time spent entering 4-digit PINs or patterns. Because it’s cumbersome and slow, many people never bother with authentication at all, or they use fast but easily-guessed PINs like “0000.”

Our smartphones are central to our digital lives...the keys to our friends, our finances, and a lot of our personal information. Security is increasingly important, but it shouldn’t be irritating. At D11 this year, Regina Dugan, who leads our Advanced Technology & Projects group, talked about futuristic ‘superpower-like’ authentication methods we’re working on. Today we’re launching Motorola Skip for Moto X, which is the first step on the path. 

Skip is a thin, thumb-sized clip that pairs with your Moto X and unlocks it with a simple tap. Wear Skip on your shirt sleeve, shirt hem, belt loop -- wherever it feels most comfortable. It’s fast, easy and secure. It provides all the benefits of a PIN without the hassle.

There are three Skip dots included with each Skip. Skip dots are stickers that, like Skip, provide authentication and also create “trusted zones” for Touchless Control. Try a Skip dot on your dashboard, your nightstand, or your desk at work. Just tap your Moto X to the Skip dot, and your phone is unlocked. Place your phone on the bedside Skip dot, “OK, Google Now, set alarm for 7 a.m.,” or place it on a Skip dot in the kitchen, “OK Google Now, what is cardamom?”

Only Skip and Skip dots that have been paired with your phone will unlock it, and you can easily unpair them if you lose or replace your Skip. If you don’t have your Skip or Skip dot handy, you can still unlock your phone with your PIN.

Once Moto X launches, Motorola Skip with three Skip dots will be available for purchase on Motorola.com. For a limited time, Motorola Skip will be included for free with all orders of Moto X through Moto Maker. To start, Skip will be available in gray with a black accent. We'll be adding colors later this fall, and we'll let you know more about that soon.

Security is important. Skip makes it easy.