Pixar artist commissioned for new Facebook emoticons?

Users of social networking giant Facebook may soon be expressing their emotions with a whole new set of custom-made emoticons —designed by an artist from world-famous Pixar studios, no less.

 

A report on BuzzFeed.com said Facebook has sought the help of Matt Jones, a Pixar story illustrator, for the job.

 

But BuzzFeed.com pointed out that Jones is working independently, and Facebook will not be collaborating officially with Pixar.

 

"Facebook was canny enough to realize that traditional emoticons are quite bland. At Pixar we consider emotional states every day with every drawing we make. Our work is informed by the years of study we do, constantly studying people's gestures and expressions in real life," it quoted Jones as saying.

 

Jones was found by Dacher Keltner, a co-director of University of California-Berkeley's Greater Good Science Program, who was starting work with Facebook to improve its emoticons.

 

At the time, Jones was studying facial expressions for a new film, whose story takes place in the mind of a young girl coming of age.

 

Keltner at first gave Jones some classic universal emotions, which Jones translated into emoticon-style drawings.

 

"I was skeptical when I handed Matt these emotions, like gratitude, relief, awe, and guilt, which no one has studied. (But) he does simple lines for facial muscle movements, and when you look at them, you just say, 'wow,' because there is so much expressiveness," BuzzFeed.com quoted Keltner as saying.

 

For his part, Jones said that if "we can crack a universal language, that will be true success."

 

"What we need to aim at is instant readability, just like what we do in cartoons," he added.

 

Favorite emoticons

 

BuzzFeed.com said Jones' favorite faces are those expressing negative emotions, like disgust, since it's a good chance to "draw a gross cartoon character."

 

The positive ones like maternal love are subtler and hence more difficult.

 

Experimenting

 

Also, Keltner has tested Jones' drawings on subjects around the world, and is translating Jones' simple line drawings back into anatomical coding of real facial movements to see if they work on a human face.

 

Presently, Jones is experimenting with colors beyond the default yellow used in most other emoticons, and is going beyond "Facebook blue."

 

Jones is also looking into whether emoticons can be three-dimensionally turned to the side, to indicate things like love or devotion.

 

He is also mulling whether the face has to live within the confines of the circle, or if eyebrows can float above, or tears fly out.

 

But one thing he is pushing for is animation of the emoticons.

 

Biggest challenge

 

Still, the biggest challenge is how to simplify and shrink down the illustrations to chat-box size just a few pixels wide.

 

"We are trying to figure out how much looseness we can keep so they don't lose the expressions," Jones said. — TJD, GMA News