I guess the current set of glyphs from Apple/Microsoft/Twitter/Google shows why this is difficult: http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/full-emoji-list.html http

I guess the current set of glyphs from Apple/Microsoft/Twitter/Google shows why this is difficult: http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/full-emoji-list.html http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/full-emoji-list.html Most of the "simple" things, like smiling/frowning/teardrop use yellow smileys. But there are also some emoji like boy/girl/man with turban/police officer which seem to call for less abstraction, and then the artist has to pick a skin tone.