Patent ID: 7609270

Claim:
A sender selectable personal animated entity for use in delivering a multi-media message from a sender to a recipient, the animated entity created according to a method comprising: receiving from the sender a personal image file at a server, the image file including an image of an entity; via a dialog between the server and the sender, requesting via a processor the sender to provide input with respect to a plurality of facial features of the image of the entity in preparation for animating the image of the entity, wherein the dialog includes, after the sender has input a predetermined number of facial features, presenting the sender with an option to continue to mark facial features; and after the sender provides the input with respect to the plurality of facial features of the image of the entity, presenting the image of the entity as a personal animated entity to the sender to preview or a display, wherein upon approval of the preview from the sender, as the sender later begins a process of preparing a multi-media message to send to the recipient, presenting the personal animated entity as a sender selectable image for delivering the multi-media message to the recipient.