GizMoz, a startup that enables users to create lifelike 3-D avatars, said it snagged a $6.5 million second round of funding and forged a deal to deliver its 3-D characters to AOL’s AIM users.

The investment in the Menlo Park, California, company was led by DoCoMo Capital, a subsidiary of Japan’s largest cellular phone service operator, with additional funding from Japan-based NGI Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Columbia Capital.

With this new investment by DoCoMo, the four-year-old company hopes to expand its business in Asia, starting with Japan, a market that leads the world in mobile Internet adoption.

“The Asian user-generated content and social entertainment market, especially in Japan and South Korea, are a huge addressable market for our services, with established business models and proven ways of monetization, for these kinds of services already exist there,” GizMoz CEO Eyal Gever said in an email.

According to comScore, 53.6 million Japanese use mobile phones to access the Internet, roughly 42 percent of the total population.

Mr. Gever said that the company plans to provide mobile offerings for businesses and end users, including web-to-mobile messaging, mobile-to-mobile messaging, and a variety of other animated applications.

Although the region represents a potentially profitable market, growth can still prove challenging for GizMoz in Japan, a country where 3-D animated characters can be raised to the rank of national icons.

But GizMoz will need to be careful about its offerings, its business model, and distribution, according to Mr. Gever.  The startup will need to make sure it localizes its service, content, and style to the tastes of Japanese consumers, he noted.

In addition to its Asia expansion, GizMoz announced that, effective today, consumers using AOL’s AIM service will now  be able to create AIM GizMoz Expressions: 3D talking GizMoz characters that can be used to better personalize chat communications.

“Teaming up with AOL allows us to introduce GizMoz characters to millions of AIM users who can now add a hilarious, lifelike quality to their virtual identity,” Mr. Gever wrote.

Characters can be picked from a large collection of celebrities and political figures or be created from one's own handsome  digital portrait.