Development of avatar generating system by constructing portraits made by friends

Recently, the Remote communication through the Internet has been performed actively. And as a remote communication tool, the uses of graphic avatars are especially popular in Japan. However, in many cases, the avatar used on the communication is not mirrored to a user who creates the avatar himself using the application software provided for the remote communication support system. Therefore, the remote friends cannot imagine the appearance of the user from his/her avatar at all. In this research, we will propose a method of creating an avatar. The method shows that the avatar is constructed by merging some portraits, which are created by user´s friends. We have developed the prototype systems for creating a portrait and an avatar composed of some portraits. This paper describes methods and systems of creating a portrait and an avatar. We performed some experiments to evaluate the usability of the proposed system and the quality of an avatar created on the proposed system. As an experimental result, it is revealed that the avatar, which is created on the proposed system, tends to be preferred by the user and friends.