Is there a way to generate high resolution PNGs of iOS emoji

Question

I was able to locate iOS emoji PNGs that are 160x160 pixels (actually WhatsApp but they are roughly the same set). When I import them into XCode 7, however, they just appear as 1x.

Is there a way to make high-resolution (perhaps retina-friendly) emoji for use in an iOS game that uses SpriteKit to animate the emoji using Photoshop, OS X, or anything similar?

I appreciate any help!

Answer 1

The glyphs for the "Apple Color Emoji" font, which is used to display emoji in Mac OS X and iOS, are PNG bitmaps. The 160x160 visuals you've found are the largest ones accessible in the font – sorry! You must sketch it yourself if you want something bigger.

The photos can be extracted using the following tool: https://github.com/tmm1/emoji-extractor