Apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with animating and rendering an avatar are disclosed herein. In embodiments, an apparatus may include a facial mesh tracker to receive a plurality of image frames, detect facial action movements of a face and head pose gestures of a head within the plurality of image frames, and output a plurality of facial motion parameters and head pose parameters that depict facial action movements and head pose gestures detected, all in real time, for animation and rendering of an avatar. The facial action movements and head pose gestures may be detected through inter-frame differences for a mouth and an eye, or the head, based on pixel sampling of the image frames. The facial action movements may include opening or closing of a mouth, and blinking of an eye. The head pose gestures may include head rotation such as pitch, yaw, roll, and head movement along horizontal and vertical direction, and the head comes closer or goes farther from the camera. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.