1. A computer-implemented method for generating animations messages using video images of human faces, the method comprising: receiving a sequence of video frames; detecting a human face within the sequence of the video frames; tracking, within the sequence of video frames, facial expression changes in the detected human face; identifying, for each of the tracked facial expression changes, a facial expression from a training set of a plurality of different facial expressions and a plurality of different user faces that most closely corresponds to the tracked facial expression change; mapping, by at least one processor, each of the identified facial expressions to three-dimensional motion data such that the identified facial expressions corresponds with the tracked facial expression changes from the sequence of video frames; and applying the three-dimensional motion data to a three-dimensional character model to animate a face of the three-dimensional character model.