Abigail Klein Leichman
November 21, 2016

Emoticons such as smiley faces are really helpful in expressing your tone in an email, post or text message. Emojis such as a thumbs-up are great for expressing ideas without even typing a word.

Yet even with all the options loaded into your messaging apps, sometimes you can’t find exactly the right icon to get across your mood or concept. That’s why so many apps offer create-your-own emojis including some with the faces of pop stars. But why use their faces when you can use your own?

The Israeli startup Panimood hopes to answer that question with Moojis, a free iOS and Android app.

Users snap a selfie and the app processes it, via a proprietary image-processing algorithm, into a portrait that you can then manipulate with simple tools to fashion different Moojis.

“What we do is basically erase the original photo and draw it back to life,” the company explains.

https://youtu.be/57DFZhuVNww

The app comes with eight built-in Moojis templates — such as nervous, happy, sad and angry — with additional options available as a paid package.

The finished icons are saved to a Moojis keypad from which users can share them on WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Snapchat and other apps. You can also create personalized stickers and signatures using your Moojis images as well.

The images are sent as photos so that recipients don’t to have to install the Moojis app to view them.

Based in Kfar Saba, Panimood was founded earlier this year by Shlomi Ben Atar, May Reshef and Eli Basson, and received initial undisclosed investment from Israel’s R.E.M Investments in mutual holdings with the Nakash brothers.

More on Innovation