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Momma Told Me: Communicate with words, not faces!
I still remember how 'cool' America Online was back when it first became a thing- you know, when it WAS the internet. Every night after dinner I'd crawl into my father's executive chair and struggle to push back his roll-top desk to log into the online subscription service known as Prodigy and explore a virtual world of interactive games and chat rooms. Naturally, the internet was just evolving, so there wasn't as much awareness for children online as there is now, but I assure you my parents kept a watchful eye and only permitted me to interact in complete anonymity in age appropriate environments. But I digress, this was before the age of smartphones and my form of texting was through a very basic customizable
avatar.
Today Sabrina, 12, believed I was referencing a feature film when I used the term avatar in a passing conversation. Today's youth have become so accustomed to Smilies and Emojis they hardly know what it means to communicate through a secondary face like an avatar. Without fail, when I recently gifted Sabrina with her first smartphone for the recent holiday I was immediately asked to help her download multiple applications full of smiling panda and food icons for her to communicate with. Hooray, another way for our modern youth to communicate without a single word, right?
After a few weeks I grew tired of trying to decipher her long distance messages full of strings of objects and cartoon characters so I sent her an invitation to download a different kind of app; Pocket Avatars. This free to download application is available through the Google Play and the (Apple) App Store with complimentary use and the option to purchase additional in app content. It acts as a secondary SMS browser within your phones functionality and will allow you to communicate via text, images, video, and recordings just like your phone's standard SMS service. In our case this proved to be a very easy to use and quick messaging application that bypasses the sometimes slow image download of our phone's MMS (multimedia messaging) data network.
But Pocket Avatars also lets you do one very cool thing you won't find anywhere else- record messages using real time facial tracking for an interactive cartoon message that is unlike anything else. You can even choose to slow down or speed up your voice recording to add an extra element of fun to the library of
Pocket Avatars characters. It's as easy as choosing an avatar/character from the gallery of free and paid characters, centering your face in the on screen recording box, and pressing the record button while you speak your message. You can tilt your head, move the hone further and closer, and even capture facial expressions while recording to truly bring your avatar message to life!
while different avatars take on their own personality with various levels of facial complexity, I found I could successfully record truly animated live action expressions, such as the tongue and wink above. It didn't take long for Sabrina to become addicted. Within minutes I had several Pocket Avatar messages, and even a new message request from her best friend! The two were sending myself and her mother recorded messages for hours! Their favorite thing to do turned out to be playing with puns and remixing favorite pop culture songs to match the personality of the avatars. How often can you say a Hamburger singing Taylor Swift turned up in your text message inbox?
I thought the Pocket Avatars application would get boring quick, but the option to group message and use the app for traditional text and image messaging really keeps the party alive. You can actually get quite advanced with your facial expressions and emoting through the avatars if you practice! I'll admit, I found myself throwing in hand gestures and twirls while recording a few times forgetting the only thing moving on screen was my cartoon face- Whoops! A little
too into it if you ask me!
The gallery of Avatars continues to grow every day, and the addition of paid licensed characters and celebrities (for a nominal one time fee) really help keep the fun alive. Personally, I'm just glad to actually hear communications from Sabrina again- I may have to listen to a monkey with a chipmunk voice but at least she's talking! Check out a message clip from a conversation we had about who had the better hairstyle that day, then head on over to follow Pocket Avatars on
Twitter and stay up to date with the newest Avatars and hilarious messages.
Who do you know that would enjoy communicating with Pocket Avatars the most?
What Daughter Says: Communicate with words AND faces when you download Pocket Avatars!
