Paul McCartney wrote tiny songs for Skype's new animated emojis
Yup, it's just about as weird as it sounds.
Last fall, Skype took the emoji and sticker craze and ran with it, introducing a new animated emoticon the company simply called the "Moji." It's basically an animation coupled with an audio clip, and they launched with big content properties like The Muppets and Jurassic Park. Now, to go along with Valentine's day, Skype has a new set of 10 Moji it designed to convey the feelings of the holiday in a bunch of silly / cute ways.
What's perhaps most interesting about these new animations is the big-name talent Skype recruited to do the sound that accompanies them: Sir Paul McCartney actually composed little 5-second ditties to go along with each, doing both sound effects and bare bones music. In a video, McCartney admits it was a "strange proposition" and that making music to fit the animations was "really challenging, but he's overall pleased with how they turned out.
The few that Skype showed us in a preview were equal parts cute and bizarre, but also a touch risqué -- one animated character pulls out flowers, chocolate, champagne... and then some fuzzy handcuffs. There's also a "flirty" banana that's essentially doing a striptease out of its peel and a sumo wrestler / cupid hybrid. Fortunately, if you don't want to suggest light bondage to the person you're Skyping with, you can preview these before sending. All in all it's a strange partnership, but it doesn't hurt Skype to have the endorsement of one of the two living Beatles members.
