A new programme from French company Ubisoft allows a video image of your face to be digitally adorned with new hairstyles and accessories. It’s instant messaging, with a twist. If you've ever been chatting online and felt your image could do with a makeover, well, now you can just change it. Hats, hairstyle, accessories, even the background, thanks to a new technique developed by French company Ubisoft. Alexandre Rémy, YouUp Coordinator, Ubisoft, "It's really aimed at two demographics, there's obviously the young audience, the adolescents, and then there's the second audience we'd like to target, those people who are just a bit more grown up who want to send personal messages and be able to customise their face, or change the decor, to send messages which are really individual, and very easy to create and send to your friends." The programme, dubbed "YouUp", uses face-recognition technology. The idea is to superimpose objects which realistically follow the movements of your own body and obey the laws of gravity. There are already nearly 250 different outfits available. Pierre Harand, Microsoft France, "YouUp will be a free application just like MSN. From the start there'll be the possibility to add costumes or free effects, some of which might be financed by advertising, so that a promoter could present something in the world of YouUp in the form of free costumes, effects, or outfits in their brand colours, to anyone using Windows Live Messenger." But if you'd rather avoid advertising, you can also buy and collect accessories and outfits sold in packs. You'll even be able to swap them with friends. The next step is video games, where this technique could have a huge impact. Promotional tests have already shown that a player's face can be imposed on a game. So your favourite videogame character could soon be you.