113 New Unicode Emoji (plus skin tones)

rockstar-emoji-image

113 new emoji are now available in /UTR #51 Unicode Emoji, Version 4.0 
<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/>/. The main focus of this 4.0 
release is further enhancing gender representation and professions. 
These new emoji are already appearing on smart phones and other devices 
and platforms that support emoji. See the full list in Emoji Recently 
Added <http://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-released.html>.

The new emoji will soon be available for adoption 
<http://unicode.org/consortium/adopt-a-character.html>, helping fund 
projects to improve language support 
<http://blog.unicode.org/2016/06/encoding-mayan-script-your-adopt.html>.

Unlike the 72 emoji characters added to Unicode 9.0 in June 
<http://blog.unicode.org/2016/06/72-new-emoji-characters.html>, these 
are not new Unicode characters. Most of these new emoji are sequences of 
existing emoji, “glued together” with a special invisible character so 
that they appear and behave like a single character. This glue character 
is called a ZWJ, pronounced “zwidge” or /zwɪdʒ/. Three existing Unicode 
9.0 characters (gender and medical symbols) were changed to qualify as 
emoji, for use in those ZWJ sequences.

Two of the new sequences are flags, 10 are family groupings (such as 
/mother with daughter/), 32 are new professions/roles (such as /man 
/or/woman astronaut/), and 66 are explicit-gendered variants (such as 
/man /or/woman running/). 99 of these sequences, plus 5 other characters 
(such as /snowboarder/), can also now have the 5 skin tone modifiers.

The technical documentation has also been updated, with additional 
guidelines for implementers and the new versions of the emoji data files 
for use in programs.

http://blog.unicode.org/2016/11/113-new-unicode-emoji-plus-skin-tones.html

• 113 New Unicode Emoji (plus skin tones) by Karl Williamson