Life

Real People Turned Into Emoji: Cool Or Creepy?

by Melanie Kozak

June 3, 2015

Every imagine what emoji would look like if they were photos of actual people? Well, the producer over at DigitalRev TV did — and therefore gave the staff the mission of recreating emoji with real people. What was the reasoning behind this? Are we supposed to learn some important lesson or break new ground? No, not really. The project was mostly for fun out of curiosity and giving the staff a challenge. Not going to lie: Some of the results are kind of creepy... and yet, they're also strangely fascinating.

We already know that a ton of emoji are incredibly unrealistic — after all, yellow heads without noses can only go so far when it comes to representing the human form — there are also a few qualitites to a number of that turn out to be somewhat surprising in their lack of realism. Consider, for example, the way the salsa girl's red dress flips up perfectly: As the creators of the video found, this little detail was actually pretty hard to recreate. All in all they do an impressive job with the recreations, something which was possibly aided by their working definition of what these little characters actually are: As they put it, "Emoji are those cute little round-faced graphics you send your friends and family to convey emotions that you can't be bothered to express using more complex methods, such as words." Nailed it.

So whether you use emoji to flirt, avoid actual conversation, or because there's no other way to express how sassy you feel except via that little whale in mid-tailflip, check out the group's recreations and maybe try some of your own: