Patent ID: 7167577

Claim:
A method for providing a visual chat session, the method comprising the operations of: reading a character image into memory; receiving video images including image data of a person, wherein the video images include a plurality of video frames; tracking a portion of a person image in the video images; executing an image gathering operation for obtaining a portion of the person image; and executing an influencing operation for influencing the character image utilizing the obtained portion of the person image; wherein the influencing operation includes a blending operation comprising the operation of: blending the obtained portion of the person image into the character image to create a blended character image, wherein the blended character image includes features corresponding to features of the person image; the features of the blended character image change as the features of the person change; and at least one feature of the blended character comprises the obtained portion of the person image; wherein the blending operation comprises the operations of: determining an average flesh tone value for each feature; determining a color relationship between each person pixel value in a feature and the determined average flesh tone value of the feature; and generating a new color value for a corresponding character pixel of the character image, wherein the new color value is generated utilizing the determined color relationship.