Most people love emoji , those little digital images or symbols that we tend to use every day in our digital conversations in order to easily and quickly convey a certain idea or feeling.
What’s more, they are a simple and straightforward option to express a certain feeling without having to give more explanations. For example, we can invite someone to eat simply by adding an icon of a hamburger, or indicate that the day has gone bad just by adding the icon of a sad face or a hand with the thumb down.
However, most traditional (or standard) emojis have a problem: they tend not to be very personal. However, Apple fixed it some time ago by creating the Animoji and Memoji , which should not be confused.
What is an animoji?
An animoji is a feature originally introduced by Apple in 2017, which transformed some of the more traditional or classic emoji icons into short, custom animations .
One of its main characteristics is that they are not only animated emojis (by calling them or identifying them in some way). Rather, they are able to scan our facial expressions , so that an animoji might be able to represent our facial behavior.
For example, if we frown in front of the Animoji, it will tend to frown. And if we shake our head, close our eyes, and laugh (all at once), the Animoji will repeat the same expression.
But its characteristics do not stop here. It is also possible to record short voice messages so, thanks to the facial scanning and the imitation of the impressions integrated in the latest iPhone (specifically from the iPhone X), the Animoji could be able to represent our own words, in a truly realistic way .
What is a memoji?
However, Apple decided to go a little further with the arrival of iOS 12, which it named Memoji . Basically, it consists of a personalized emoji, similar to the Animoji, but with a key difference: it offers us the possibility of creating a kind of mini-emoji of ourselves .
What’s more, it offers us the possibility of adding text, stickers, shapes or filters, in order to generate an even more complete version of the Animoji and, why not, much more fun.
It is a functionality that we find available in iPhone X, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, all versions of iPhone 11 and also iPhone 12, in addition to iPad Pro.
To create it, the system uses the front TrueDepth camera that we find in the iPhone in order to measure and analyze 50 different muscle movements of the face, being able to reflect the facial expressions of the user who is creating / editing it.
What can creating a Memoji be useful for?
We could say that the advantages of creating and using a Memoji are practically the same for which we could decide to create an Animoji, with the added feature that it will be an emoji with an appearance quite similar to whoever creates it (in this case, for example, ourselves).
It is, therefore, a very useful option to enrich our messages, since the corresponding application (Messages) offers us the possibility of even recording video messages with the Memoji, which is capable of reproducing our facial expressions while recording our voice-over, so that it almost seems that it is the puppet who is speaking for us.
It is also possible to use it in FaceTime , so it would only be enough to open the app, make a call and, just when it starts, touch the star icon in order to open the camera effects. On this occasion, we choose the Memoji that we want to use and that’s it.
