"One of the things that’s really powerful about this engine is, you can say, 'I want something that looks like me,' and everything else, the animation, falls into place," Durett says. IMVU has over 20 million assets of 3-D parts in its catalog. With all of that at your disposal, you can piece together to make the perfect, realistic avatar of yourself (or anyone, real or imagined).But what really took the new Kimoji from good to amazing was the collaboration with Kim, Kanye, and the company that published Kimoji, Whalerock, LLC."Kim gave us amazing creative feedback," Durett said. "All the creative direction came from their side. You really did feel this vision to make things a little bit better...They have a great eye for looking at something and quickly understanding what needs to be done to make it better."IMVU's technology got the ultra-realistic avatars 95% of the way there, and then that collaborative process is what finished off that last 5% of the product, which covered things as subtle as eye shape, the reflection on the corner of a lip, or shading on makeup.It's clear Kim's Kimoji have become a cultural phenomenon — now, a growing number of other celebrities are coming up with their own, including Justin Bieber . But without that underlying technology, well, it'll be hard for these other celebrity emoji apps to match the epic level of the Kimoji "Don't be rude!" GIF