Patent Document ID: 8125485
Application ID: 12622553

Base Claim:
1. A method of animating speech of an avatar representing a participant in a mobile communication, the method comprising: selecting, by a computer, from data storage, one or more images to represent the participant; selecting, by the computer, from data storage, a generic animation template for the participant, the generic animation template having a mouth and at least one emotive feature, the mouth characterized by a mouth position; fitting, by the computer, the one or more images with the generic animation template; texture wrapping, by the computer, the one or more images over the generic animation template; displaying, by the computer, the one or more images texture wrapped over the generic animation template; receiving, by the computer, an audio speech signal derived from the mobile communication of the participant; identifying, by the computer, from the audio speech signal, a series of phonemes and one or more points of voice inflection greater than a predetermined threshold, each phoneme in the series of phonemes representing a portion of the audio speech signal; for each phoneme in the series of phonemes: identifying, by the computer, a new mouth position for the mouth of the generic animation template; altering, by the computer, the mouth position of the mouth of the generic animation template to the new mouth position; texture wrapping, by the computer, a portion of the one or more images corresponding to the altered mouth position of the mouth of the generic animation template; displaying, by the computer, the texture wrapped portion of the one or more images corresponding to the altered mouth position of the mouth of the generic animation template; and playing, by the computer, synchronously with the displayed texture wrapped portion of the one or more images, the portion of the audio speech signal represented by the phoneme; and for each point of voice inflection of the one or more points of inflection greater than the predetermined threshold, triggering, by the computer, a motion key-frame caption that alters display of the at least one emotive feature synchronously with playing, by the computer, a portion of the audio speech signal including the point of voice inflection greater than the predetermined threshold.

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Claim 6:
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the fitting the one or more images with the generic animation template comprises: resizing the one or more images to conform with the size of the generic animation template; identifying specific facial features of the one or more images; aligning the specific facial features with corresponding facial features of the generic animation template; and reshaping the generic animation template to conform with the one or more images.