Mobile entertainment using personal avatars

We present LiveMail, prototype system that allows mobile subscribers to communicate using personalized 3D face models created from images taken by their phone cameras. The user takes a snapshot of someone's face - a friend, famous person, themselves, even a pet - using the mobile phone's camera. After a quick manipulation on the phone, a 3D model of that face is created and can be animated simply by typing in some text. Speech and appropriate animation of the face are created by speech synthesis. Animations can be sent to others as short videos in MMS. They can be used as fun messages, greeting cards etc. The system is based on a client/server communication model. The clients are mobile devices or web clients so messages can be created, sent and received on the mobile phone or on a web page. The client has a user interface that allows the user to input a facial image and place a simple mask on it to mark the main features. The client then sends this data to the server that builds a personalized face model. The client also provides an interface that lets the user request the creation of animated messages using speech synthesis. The animations are created on the server. It is planned to have several versions of the client: Symbian, midlet-based, web-based, wap-based, etc. The server, Symbian client, midlet-based client and the web client have been implemented as prototypes. We present the system architecture and the experience gained building such a system.