Emote support would be cool! I like the visual style you created. It looks like the antialiasing has been cut too short on the face outlines maybe, making them not quite round? But the colors are nice and the faces are very readable.
Most of the emotions are (purposefully) exaggerated, which is a valid choice (and in the spirit of what one can find on many forums), but I'd like to submit that it is a choice that should be thought about, because lots of people will be using emotes and it gives a tone to the interactions in the community. This might be seen as nitpicky but Leaf has built a place with a look & feel that's very genuine to me and I think it's important that the emotes be consistent with that.
Thinking about other forums I've been on, beyond text, emotes define the palette of emotions that can be communicated with the least resistance, and it might shape (to some extent) our interactions with one another.
To be honest, I'm surprised I care enough about the subject to write that long a comment on it haha. Please very much feel free to ignore everything below, I'm trying to be helpful and I'm sorry if it feels like I'm over-analyzing it. Hopefully some of it will be useful feedback!
- I think it's important that the default ":)" smiley communicates a clear and simple emotion of being content / peaceful. To me, the first one you shared looks a bit like it is humbled rather than happy or something? (Maybe something with the brows, like it's squinting?)
- When I look at the 2nd and 3rd emotes, I feel they can easily be used to express pride and possibly mocking rather than good-natured laughter or simple excitement. I wouldn't want ":D" to be bound to either of them as is.
- The 4th one expresses a hint of shame rather than the simple discontent / sadness I associated with ":(", and I wouldn't be comfortable using the 5th one to express actual sadness, only ironically.
Having exaggerated emotes is fun and useful, but I wanted to point out that it's important to have a good range of emotes that let one express empathy, too, so that we can use them for all kinds of discussion, not just lighthearted ones. Again, I hope it's alright that I'm not submitting any emotes of my own, I realize it's easy to be a critic and I really like what you started, so I wanted to share my two cents about where it could be headed.
EDIT: I just made a variant of the base smiley where I tried to fix the aliasing issue I mentioned (look at the left and right sides) and I gave it an expression that I think better fits the simple ":)" emote.
For comparison, here it is alternating with the original:
