The role of emoticons in computer graphics.
The Role of Emoticons in Computer Graphics
Daniel Flis
Akademia Humanistyczno Ekonomiczna Wydział Techniki i Informatyki
Abstract. Emojis have proven to be a very efficient tool not only in interaction with the rapid growth of the Internet but also to act as a stimulus to improve and grow our abilities in processing and changing computer graphics. As we can see they are mainly used as functional and efficient emotion indicators in the internet – based communication, but they have also helped us develop our skills further in the field of the computer graphics.
Keywords: emoji, communication, computer graphics, emotion expression, semantic expression.
Introduction
When looking at an abstract of emojis and how they contributed to the wider field of computer graphics one cannot simply discard the idea as ridiculous. How come things that we usually associate with pop culture and younger generation could have an impact in how we progressed with computer graphics? What is the driver to even entertain such idea? I will try my best to explain and bring this subject closer to the readers view in this paper.
I believe that the best way to highlight emojis important footprint in evolution of computer graphics to the readers understanding would be achieved if we delve into history of emoticons before they came to be in our everyday life – whether on the messages we send on the cellular phones to wider use in computer graphics. Then we will look at different interpretations of these over time and different platforms and end with concluding my research and understanding of the subject matter.
History
It is worth mentioning what the root of the word emoji is derived from Japanese word that literally means “picture letter”, which describes a small digital picture or pictorial symbol that represents a thing, a feeling or a concept used mainly in text messages and other electronic communications [1].
Other sources report that the word emoticon was created by blending together the word's emotion and icon and most commonly this is defined as a
typographic representation composed of punctuation marks, numbers and letters meant to illustrate a facial expression capable of conveying emotions in a text-only medium. And this had supposedly led to abbreviation of the word to more catchy emoji and creating a whole host of picture-based graphics [2]
However, I am more acceptive to assume that in fact emoticons have their beginnings in more ancient history of mankind and we are currently moving back to the roots of the ways that ancient Egyptian civilization was using pictures as means of communication. As we know the Egyptians used Hieroglyphic writing, a system that was employing characters in the form of pictures. They could be read as pictures, symbols for objects or symbols for sounds. [3] And from that description we can clearly see that modern emojis represent that same functionality but after undergoing modernization and adaptation for current times and information transferring media like mobile devices.
Evolution of Emojis
What is probably most interesting is that we can clearly see that not like in the case of hieroglyphs – emojis evolved over the years. We can see this evolution streaming from two different directions at the same time to a point where they clash and merge together to form what we know as emojis at present.
According to some sources the actual smiley face which became the first emoji dates as far back as 1700 B. C., with an article claiming that this has been discovered by a team of archaeologists in 2017 presented in Fig. 1 below.
Fig. 1. 3700 years old pot discovered in 2017 with first pictogram of a smiley face [4]
Second known graphical iteration of a smiley emoji is a legal document produced in Slovakia dated 1635 A. D. It is said that a lawyer named Jan Ladislaides gave his approval of municipal account documents by scrawling a small circle with dots and a line. But most commonly recognised first draft of an actual smiley face that was then coined into an emoji is Harvey’s Ross Ball smiley face that has been created by him in 1963 which was in fact a commission for an ad from this graphic artist seen in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Harvey Ball with original smiley design [4]
As a side note this iconic design has been created in just 10 minutes with a commission of $45. [4] I strongly feel that this part strongly correlates with the graphical design emojis have taken at their source. On the other side we have the first attempts to construct reflection of graphical side of emojis using keyboard characters – these typographical emoji predecessors are called emoticons and I strongly believe that these were what inspired the graphical design of emojis. Some examples have been presented in Fig. 3.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Fig. 3. Examples of the earlier typographical emoticons [5]
The concept of these has been formulated on one of the posts within the bulletin boards of the Carnegie Mellon University – first computerised attempt at conveying an emotion related to a message. The smiling typographical emoticon: :-) was to annotate joke markers in the posts on the board whilst the sad typographical emoticon: :-( was to indicate serious matters. This is then what is recognised as the birth or the first computer emojis predecessors as we know them now and dates to 1982 [2]. However, there are some sources that indicate earlier introduction in typographical form dating to 1872 [6].
Emoticon and Emoji – know the difference
It is worth mentioning that emoticons and emojis are two different entities, however I would like to think that it is emoticons that led to the need for the emojis. But what is the difference? Emoticons are keyboard characters typed in a sequence that should made the reader associate it with a face and an expression. There are many examples here to quote but I will most likely group them into 3 types. One is simple emoticons like the aforementioned one used on one of the computer boards at Carnegie Mellon University: :-). Second type is more elaborate and usually employs more special characters on the keyboard like so: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Third and final doesn’t represent human feelings or emotions, but rather objects of everyday life like a rose: @}-;-’---. As you can see, this is quite efficient to convey the message and every single person could be the emoticon designer. The fine details of how they design the emoticon is due to their discretion but this has one flaw. If the recipient isn’t able to decipher the message, we will lose the ability to communicate our feelings and intentions and in turn can be taken as rude or nonsensical. All of this just because our message wasn’t easily understandable. And I believe that this was the point when it has been realised that an introduction of emojis is needed. We can see that from a simple smiling face and sad face they have evolved over the years to represent more and more emotions and moods to a moment where simply using characters was not sufficient enough and in 1999 Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita created the first emoji whilst working on one of the messaging programs for Japanese Carrier NTT DoCoMo which was including such standards as web access and email. Unfortunately, the system was limited to 250 characters which in the end would impair the ability of the users to express themselves. He had to work within a grid measuring 12 by 12 pixels and he managed to design a total of 176 icons. [2] According to my calculations this equates to 144 dots to work with, or in more technical terms total of 18 bytes of data, which means that this set has sprawled over total space of 3 kilobytes of memory. Fig. 4 presents some of the original sketches that Shigetaka Kurita has made for the needs of his design work.
Fig. 4. Some of Shigetaka Kurita's early emoji
Strangely the first concept provided by Shigetaka Kurita took 11 years to be adapted to Unicode – a computing industry standard for consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in majority of the writing systems used worldwide. The first platform supporting emoji was Apple’s iOS. This has been achieved by adding a dedicated set of icons within its own keyboard and two years later Google decided to follow suit. It is worth mentioning that without the support of these two techs giant's emoji would wait a lot longer to become their own universal language. [2]
Benefits and caveats of raster vs vector graphics
Returning to the design that Shigetaka Kurita created it is safe to say that judging by current standards this was a very crude form of emoji in relation to computer graphics. Yet I would like to believe that this has significant impact on the evolution of this discipline. As we already covered the history it is clear that first emoji set has been created in raster graphics which is referred to as digital image using tiny rectangular pixels as building blocks. Whilst the raster graphics are current standard, they are rather large and clumsy when it comes to displaying across different devices. This is due to the fact that raster images carry a lot more information as each individual pixel information needs to be coded in order to display correct image. Blowing up raster images will lead to the “pixelization” of the image with each individual pixels visible to a point where it becomes completely non sensical and loses any resemblance to the original. Scaling the image into the other spectrum and making it smaller than original will create a less crisp effect or make it “softer” than the original. So, it is safe to say that in order for us to be able to maximize the quality of the raster image, we need to keep in mind that this format is resolution specific. Hence the same raster image will look differently on a phone screen, tablet screen as well as a regular PC screen due to different resolutions – as presented on Fig. 5 below.
Fig. 5 Left: Full image. Right: Image zoomed in to show square pixels that make it
That doesn’t mean that raster graphics are useless. They are still the best format to use when we want to display such things like a photograph. [8] However, emoji are not photographs but computer graphics and hence why the best solution for creating and displaying them is vector graphics. Vector graphics are different in a way that they are based on mathematical formulas that define geometric primitives such as polygons, lines, curves, circles and rectangles. Because of true primitives used in the vector graphics they are best to be used to represent more structures images like line art graphics, logos, letterheads and fonts. This is also leading to the vector graphics being more malleable and thus more versatile, flexible and making their use on different displays a lot easier. [8] Their ease of scalability can be a huge advantage – imagine having to work with a grid of 12 x 12 pixels to create an emoji. This task would be near on impossible to achieve a modern effect like we can see on our phones. However due to the fact that they are quickly and perfectly scalable – we can create an emoji as large as we want and scale it down without any loss of quality. Considering the above it is clear that the benefits of creating emoji in vector graphics are significant. The most obvious point is that the designers can decide to work on a much larger model with higher number of details that then can be scaled down to any device display and not suffer from loss of quality nor the message it is intended to carry. Best example of this can be found below in Fig. 6 where we can sclearly see the difference when trying to scale up raster-based emoji as originally designed by Shigetaka Kurita and more modern one used by iOS:
Fig. 6. Fist bump emoji comparison whilst scaled up. Raster design (left) versus vector design (right). [9]
As can be seen the image quality loss whilst trying to maintain clear message carrying qualities in the raster image is highly impacted, whilst the vector image maintain high quality even at this size and more over the message can be still clearly interpreted by the receiving party. This yields great benefits for the designers and can readily be implemented across a range of devices and represent the same meaning.
Since the inception of emoji, we can note that over the years they have evolved, rounded up, started representing more and more everyday objects, situations, activities and most importantly emotions. From a 12 x 12 pixels grid that was hardly cohesive and understandable to a fully working add-on keyboard that we carry in our phones, tablets and even other devices, we could note how much they have changed and with that we can also note how much of an impact they had on overall computer graphics. Let’s begin with the graphic formats. Whilst it is clear that raster graphics currently are the standard, they are slowly being pushed out by vector graphics as this format evolves and as we are currently living in the world conquered by advertisement-based services. And with growing numbers of devices that we are using this trend is only going to continue – placing demand on more flexible designs that can be scaled at will without any loss of quality. Depending on the device we might not need to have the ability of vector graphics to adjust to the resolution, however if you look at large brands like Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Apple or automotive like Mercedes or BMW you can note that all of their advertising is either a well-placed ad on the website or a billboard on the motorway. The beauty of it is that we can clearly notice that they are the same image, yet their size will be completely different. And thanks to the vector graphics this is now possible. From oscilloscopes and basic games of the past to nearly dying out due to popularization of raster graphics, vector graphics are now making a comeback and I would like to think that this is all due to... Emojis.
Everyone is a creative creator!
As previously mentioned, the original set of 176 emojis has been created in a 12 x 12-pixel grid. Currently all over internet where we search the term: “How to create your own emoji”, most of the websites recommend minimum of 128 x 128- pixel grid. This is a huge improvement over the originals but that is only if we use raster graphics. With vector graphics we can use any resolution we desire as the rest will be calculated by the mathematical formulas guarding the rules of vector graphics. This creates a huge scope for possibilities and grows our ability to add detail to emoji’s that otherwise would be lost. With this comes a great dose of previously restrained creativity and abilities to portray even more everyday objects and emotions. There is so many in fact that not each one of them is accepted into the Unicode Emoji Proposals to be finalized and adopted in Unicode, which we will
later see on our devices – in fact the list is so long that I didn’t have the opportunity to count all the entries since its creation (full list can be found on the official Unicode Emoji Proposals website: https://www.unicode.org/). Moreover, we can find the actual guidance on how to submit new emoji proposals and what information and research has to be conducted to even make into the first stage of review. But where does it all tie up to how did emoji impacted computer graphics? The answer is in the sheer number of submissions each year into the Unicode Consortium. And while not every single one is then successfully added to Unicode standard adopted worldwide, there is an indication in how much have emojis awoken our creativity in a space of a decade since their arrival outside of Japan. Adding to it that the original emoji set was consisting of 176 emojis that now grew to excess of 3000 over a decade we can clearly see that this opened not only a need for better communication but also as we discussed the change in the vector to raster then back to vector graphics a need to be able to more accurately describe things via pictures sent in a electronical way. Diversity of emojis is also an example on the impactful influence of emoji on computer graphics. Take for example a simple smile emoji. Not only we can now choose the colour of the skin tone to send, but also whether its eyes are opened or closed – and if closed in which way. Whether we can see inside its mouth to notice the tongue or we should see the rows of teeth to end up on the emoji being upside down.
Conclusion
Whilst I tried my best to highlight the significance and importance of the role that emoji has for computer graphics; I don’t personally feel like this paper is an exhaustive work that can clearly answer this question. As I believe further research and evidence finding would be beneficial to this subject to be able to prove this theory completely and without a shadow of a doubt, we can see that there is a clear connection between ancient hieroglyphs used in Egypt and emojis currently used by the masses to communicate. The clear message from this paper is that emojis have evolved over the years along technology and helped us develop our communication and creative skills. They are so strongly ingrained in our culture that even the Oxford Dictionary rewarded emoji as a word of the year in 2015.
Bibliography
