Android emojis: how to change theme? The yellow blob emojis on my android 6 phone are mostly incomprehensible. Is that one laughing or looking sad? No idea.

Is there a way to replace them with pictures that better represent the emotions they're supposed to help us communicate?

AFAIK emoji are sent as Unicode code points, so presumably they're rendered like a font would be.

(I feel very old asking this question, like I'm just supposed to know... it might even help if there was a list describing the picture in words)
You can use the unicode character codes found here to choose an emojis you like better:

http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode