Videophone terminal

A videophone terminal for communicating with other terminals over a network by using speech and pictures including a virtual character generated based on the face of a person, said videophone terminal comprising:

• a video processor for analyzing a picture obtained by a camera, identifying a location of a face in the picture, and extracting feature points of the face;
• an audio processor for analyzing audio obtained from a microphone and processing the audio;
• and
• a virtual character generator for generating a virtual character based on the extracted feature pointes,
• wherein, when a predetermined operation is performed for releasing a pending state by using a keyboard or when a face of an user operating the videophone before the pending state is recognized from a face obtained during the pending state by matching the feature points of both faces,
• 1) said virtual character generator generates a picture indicating that said virtual character comes back on a screen and said audio processor generates a predetermined sound,
• 2) the generated picture and the predetermined sound are transmitted to the other terminal, and then,
• 3) the pending state is released.

A videophone terminal for communicating with other terminals over a network by using speech and pictures including a virtual character generated based on the face of a person, said videophone terminal comprising:

• a video processor for analyzing a picture obtained by a camera, identifying a location of a face in the picture, and extracting feature points of the face;
• an audio processor for analyzing audio obtained from a microphone and processing the audio;
• and
• a virtual character generator for generating a virtual character based on the extracted feature points,
• wherein, when a predetermined operation is performed at the end of communication with the other terminal, said virtual character generator generates a picture indicating that the virtual character is disappearing from a screen and the generated picture is transmitted to the other terminal before a line is disconnected, and
• wherein plural types of the picture indicating that the virtual character is disappearing from a screen are capable of being generated in accordance with the predetermined operation selected by the user.