Despite Disney’s usual close ties to Apple, Disney’s Bob Iger is on Apple’s Board, a new partnership between Disney and Samsung is launching today. Disney characters are now available as AR Emojis for the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. Users will be able to access Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse directly from their phone to create personalized messages. This is the first time that Disney characters are coming to life in an augmented reality setting for communications and messaging. Characters fromThe Incredibles, Zootopia, and Frozen will roll out throughout the year.
Starting with Mickey and Minnie makes sense as both characters have begun celebrating their 90th anniversary.
“By extending our characters and stories to new digital platforms, we are creating daily Disney experiences everywhere our audience goes, and we are able to draw in new generations of fans,” said John Love, Vice President, Apps at Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media. “The Disney AR Emojis offer an innovative approach to content for the Galaxy S9 and S9+ and a fun way to bring magic to messages.”
“With more than 6 billion emojis sent daily, our goal with developing AR Emoji was to provide a fun, exciting way to communicate and a new way to bring animated images to life,” said Younghee Lee, CMO and Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics. “We knew there was no one better to partner with than Disney – creator of some of the most beloved characters in history – to make our AR Emojis the happiest faces on earth and give our users access to the most popular characters to share with friends across platforms.”
The characters are available from the AR Emoji mode on the camera of the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+.
AR Emojis allow users to create fun customized messages to send to friends. The AR Emojis use deep learning and facial recognition technology to map more than 100 facial features to produce a 3D replica, allowing users to create fun, customized messages to send to friends. AR Emojis offer eighteen pre-set stickers using standard AGIF file format, so they can be easily shared with anyone, no matter what kind of smartphone they have.1When users find an AR Emoji they love, they can pin it to their Always On Display, so they can enjoy it whenever they look at their phone.
Despite Disney’s connection to Apple, they remain platform agnostic working with a wide array of technology providers. Disney Parks street-view is now available in Google Maps and wide variety of Disney experiences are available on Amazon Echo and Google Home.