14. A custom emoticon engine having at least a physical component in a computing device, the custom emoticon engine comprising: an image selector configured to create a custom graphical emoticon from a still image, wherein the custom graphical emoticon is representable as a single array grid of pixels; a custom emoticon object store configured to store the custom graphical emoticon; a character sequence assignor configured to associate a sequence of characters with the custom graphical emoticon, the sequence of characters being input by a user via a user-input device; and a transmitter configured to send the character sequence embedded in a text message to a destination, wherein the array grid of pixels replaces the character sequence within the text message at the destination as both of the text message and the array grid of pixels are displayed on a screen.
15. The custom emoticon engine as recited in claim 14 , further comprising a user interface wherein a first dialogue is deployed to define custom graphical emoticons and a second dialogue is deployed to create real-time messages to include character sequences associated with the custom graphical emoticons.