Animoji are a set of digital avatars created by Apple Inc., based upon symbols of animals and mythical creatures from their Apple Color Emoji typeface. Unlike standard emoji, Animoji are 3D models which can be custom-animated using facial motion capture to reflect the user's own facial expressions and utilize lip sync to appear to speak audio messages recorded by the sender.[1] The name is a portmanteau of "animated emoji", referring to this ability. Certain Animoji also use audio modulation features to change how the voice of the character sounds when recorded.[2]
Animoji can be accessed from the iMessage app on supported devices and can embedded on top of users in FaceTime calls or on video recorded in Clips.[3] A set of static expressions for each character, themselves based on other popular "smiley" emojis, are also available as a set of iMessage stickers and are available on devices without Face ID support. Despite their similar appearance to standard emoji, Animoji have no relation to the Unicode standard and are simply sent across devices as image or video files.
- ^ Picaro, Elyse Betters (2017-09-12). "What are Animoji? How to create and use Apple's animated emoji". Pocket-lint. Retrieved 2024-09-20.
- ^ "Apple's New Animoji". Emojipedia. 2017-09-12. Retrieved 2024-09-20.
- ^ "Hands-On with Clips 2.1: Memoji and Animoji Support, Plus New Sticker Face Tracking and More". 2019-12-06. Retrieved 2024-09-20.