Apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with animating and rendering an avatar are disclosed herein. An apparatus may include an avatar animation engine (104) configured to receive a plurality of facial motion parameters and a plurality of head gestures parameters, respectively associated with a face and a head of a user. The plurality of facial motion parameters may depict facial action movements of the face, and the plurality of head gesture parameters may depict head pose gestures of the head. Further, the avatar animation engine (104) may be configured to drive an avatar model with facial and skeleton animations to animate an avatar, using the facial motion parameters and the head gestures parameters, to replicate a facial expression of the user on the avatar that includes impact of head post rotation of the user.