To create your own character, work through five steps in order: start with the idea (who is this?), shape the look until it matches, give it a name, add gear or a power, then drop it into a story. Free creators like Mysh, Toontastic 3D and Scratch handle the look — but the idea, the name and the story are what actually make the character yours.
Some kids don’t just play with characters. They invent them. There’s a whole cast living in their head — a hero with a specific name, a certain look, a backstory nobody’s heard yet.
If that’s your kid, you already know the frustrating part. They want somewhere to make that character real, and most tools stop at picking a hairstyle and an outfit, which holds a nine-year-old’s attention for about four minutes.
Here’s the good news: a great character doesn’t come from a fancy tool. It comes from a process — one your kid can run on paper, on a tablet, or in the back of the car. This guide walks through that process, then covers six free places to build the character once they’ve invented it.
How to create your own character in 5 steps
However fancy the tool, a great character comes together the same way. If your kid is staring at a blank screen, walk them through these five steps.
To make it concrete, I’ll build one alongside you — a character a seven-year-old invented at one of our events, and one I’ve since watched a lot of kids reinvent in their own way.
1. Start with the idea, not the menu
Before touching any buttons, ask one question: who is this?
Not what do they look like — who are they. A brave one? A sneaky one? A gentle giant who’s secretly frightened of the dark? The idea drives every other decision, and kids who skip it end up scrolling menus and picking whatever looks coolest, which is how you get a character they’ve forgotten by dinner.
If your kid goes blank, ask smaller questions instead. What are they best at? What are they bad at? What would make them run away? That last one is unreasonably effective — a character’s fear tells you more about them than their hair colour ever will.
Our example: a hedgehog who wants to be a knight, but is too small to hold a proper sword.
Notice there’s a problem baked in already. That’s not an accident — the best character ideas contain a difficulty, because a difficulty is what a story is made of.
2. Shape the look until it matches
Now open the creator, and build outward from the idea — body, face, colours, style — until what’s on screen matches the picture in their head.
This is the step tools are actually good at, and it’s worth letting kids take their time. Watch for the moment they go still and lean in: that’s the reveal, when the thing on screen finally clicks into the thing they imagined. Kids will turn the tablet around to show you when it happens.
One tip that saves a lot of frustration: encourage one deliberate odd detail. A mismatched eye, a too-long scarf, one silver boot. Generic characters are forgettable; one strange specific detail makes a character feel invented rather than assembled.
Our example: small, brown, dented tin helmet two sizes too big. The helmet was the odd detail — and it became the character’s whole personality.
3. Name it (don’t rush this one)
A character isn’t really theirs until it has a name. This is the step kids skip and later regret, usually by calling something “Guy” and then being stuck with it.
If naming stalls, try these:
- Sound first. Say nonsense syllables out loud until one feels right. Kids are very good at this and adults are very bad at it.
- Borrow from the real world. Plants, weather, tools, minerals. Bramble. Cinder. Hollow. Pike.
- Give them a title, not just a name. “Bramble the Unarmed” does more work than “Bramble.”
Say the finished name out loud a few times. If your kid is still saying it happily on the third go, it’s the right one.
Our example: Bramble. Bramble the Unarmed.
4. Give it gear or a power
A sword, a cloak, a gadget, a strange ability. Gear is where a character stops being a drawing and starts being a someone — because gear implies use, and use implies story.
The trick is to make the gear answer the problem from step 1, rather than cancel it. A tiny hedgehog who gets a giant sword is a boring solution. A tiny hedgehog who fights with a sewing needle and is genuinely excellent at it is a character.
Ask: what does this character carry, and what would they never carry?
Our example: a sewing needle for a sword, and a thimble shield. Refuses to wear armour because the helmet is enough.
5. Drop it into a story
Give the character one thing to do, or one problem to solve. Not an epic — one problem.
This is the step that makes everything stick. A character sitting in a gallery is a picture. A character trying to do something is a character. And this is where the actual thinking lives: your kid has to decide what Bramble does when the drawbridge is up, which is storytelling, decision-making and problem-solving all wearing a costume.
Start with a single sentence: “[Character] wants ______, but ______.”
Our example: Bramble wants to join the castle guard, but nobody will open the gate for a hedgehog.
That’s it — idea, look, name, gear, story. A kid who follows those five steps isn’t making a face they’ll forget by Thursday. They’re building a character they’re proud of, and getting a little better at inventing one each time.
Original character ideas to get unstuck
Some kids invent nonstop. Others freeze at a blank screen. If yours is the second kind, these prompts have a good hit rate — pick one and run it through the five steps:
- A creature that’s terrible at the one thing its species is famous for
- Someone whose job is to fix a thing nobody else notices is broken
- A hero who can only use their power once a day
- A villain who is completely certain they’re the good guy
- A character built from your kid’s own worst habit, exaggerated
- A guardian of something very small and very unimportant
- Someone who lost something and is quietly looking for it in every scene
- A creature made of a material it shouldn’t be made of — glass, paper, weather
The last one is worth pushing on. “A knight made of paper” instantly raises questions — rain, fire, folding — and questions are the beginning of a story.
Avatar vs. character: why most creators feel thin
Here’s the distinction that explains why so many character tools disappoint.
An avatar is a picture. You tweak a face, tap done, and that’s the end of it. A character has gear, a story, and a life that continues after you close the screen.
Kids feel that gap even when they can’t name it. Picking eye colour is fine, but tapping through a menu doesn’t ask anything of a kid — and it doesn’t give much back. There’s nothing underneath the picture, so there’s nothing to be proud of having built.
So as you look at the options below, the test isn’t “how many hairstyles does it have.” It’s: can my kid put their own idea in, get something back that’s theirs to keep, and come out a slightly more confident maker?
How to draw your own character (if drawing is their thing)
Plenty of kids would rather draw than assemble. The five steps work exactly the same — the only difference is step 2.
- Start with shapes, not outlines. Two circles and a rectangle before any detail. Kids who start with an outline get stuck fixing the face; kids who start with shapes get a pose.
- Draw it three times before committing. The third one is almost always the best. This is the single most useful drawing habit to teach.
- Draw the silhouette in solid black. If you can still tell who it is with no detail at all, the design is working. This is the same test professional character designers use, and kids find it weirdly satisfying.
- Give it one expression it does constantly. A permanent squint, a raised eyebrow. Repeating one expression is what makes a drawn character feel alive across multiple pictures.
- Draw it doing something. Same rule as step 5 — standing still is a portrait, doing something is a character.
Then, if they want to see it move, tools like Toontastic 3D and Scratch both include free-draw options, so a hand-drawn character can be animated rather than replaced.
Where kids can create their own character for free
Six places worth your kid’s time. All are free to start, and the safety notes are the honest version rather than the marketing version.
Best for building creative confidence: Mysh
Most tools here are great at one slice — a picture, an animated clip, a printed miniature. Mysh is built for the whole five steps, including the two that usually get skipped: gear and story.
A kid brings a hero to life from their own idea — not from a menu, and not with an AI writing it for them — forges its gear, and takes it on adventures. Because the kid makes every choice, what they end up with is genuinely theirs, and that ownership is where creative confidence comes from. Inventing a hero, kitting it out and steering it through a story is exactly the practice described in the five steps above.
And it sticks. The character doesn’t vanish when they close the tab — it persists and grows, waiting the next day. That’s the difference between something a kid returns to and a four-minute novelty.
The honest limitations: it’s browser-based, so there’s no app-store version.
Safety, plainly: no ads, no strangers, no purchases aimed at your kid.
Best for a quick animated story: Toontastic 3D
Google’s Toontastic 3D lets a kid design a character and record a short animated cartoon with it, narrating in their own voice. Free and ad-free. It’s a story-clip maker — excellent for a one-off cartoon, though characters don’t carry from one project to the next, so step 5 restarts each time.
Safety: self-contained. Creation and playback happen on the device, with no social feed to wander into.
Best for the kid curious about coding: Scratch
Scratch, from MIT, is really a first coding tool wearing a character-maker costume: kids build a character, then program it to move, talk and react. If your kid wants to know how games actually get made, this is where that starts. Free, used in classrooms worldwide.
Safety: solid, with one caveat — if your kid explores shared projects, that’s other people’s content. Set expectations before they browse.
Best for a polished, comic-ready look: Canva
Canva’s character and cartoon tools let a kid build a clean, professional-looking character to drop straight into a comic strip or story. The free tier does plenty, and it’s the best pick for a kid who cares about the finish.
Safety: strong on the education setup; on the standard version, the wider template library is worth a glance first.
Best for the gear-obsessed: Hero Forge
Hero Forge is a 3D character creator — your kid poses and kits out a fully three-dimensional hero with armour, weapons and fantasy races. Designing is free; you only pay if you want a physical miniature printed. A dream for a step-4 kid, though it’s a design tool rather than somewhere to keep playing.
Safety: clean — a design tool, not a community.
Best for families already playing tabletop: D&D Beyond
If your household already runs the occasional campaign, D&D Beyond’s free character builder lets a kid roll up a proper adventurer — species, class, background, the works. It’s more involved than the rest, so treat it as a parent-and-kid project rather than solo play.
Safety: the builder itself is fine. It’s a tabletop tool, so it assumes an adult nearby.
Free character creators compared
| Tool | Best for | What your kid makes | Character sticks around? | Ads, chat or purchases | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mysh | Creative confidence, ages 6–12 | A hero with gear, taken through ongoing adventures | Yes — persists and grows | None of the three | Free |
| Toontastic 3D | A quick animated story | A short narrated cartoon | No — per project | Ad-free, on-device | Free |
| Scratch | Curiosity about coding | A character they program | Yes, within their projects | Shared projects are others’ content | Free |
| Canva | A polished, comic-ready look | A clean character image or comic | Saved as a file | Wider template library on standard tier | Free tier |
| Hero Forge | Gear and armour obsessives | A posed 3D hero | Saved design only | No community feed | Free to design |
| D&D Beyond | Families already at the table | A full tabletop adventurer | Yes, as a character sheet | Assumes adult involvement | Free builder |
What kind of maker is your kid?
Kids tend to create in one of three ways, and knowing which one yours is tells you where to start.
The Story-maker
Builds a character and immediately wants to take it somewhere. What keeps them going is what happens next — step 5 is their favourite and step 2 is an obstacle. Start them on Mysh, where the hero they build carries into ongoing adventures. Toontastic is a good add-on for a quick animated clip.
The Designer
All about expression — many characters, detailed just so. The joy is in the making itself, and they may never get to step 5 at all, which is fine. Point them at Canva, or hand them paper and the drawing section above.
The Forger
Lives for the gear. Armour, weapons, kitting a hero out exactly right. Mysh lets them forge gear and then actually use it; Hero Forge and D&D Beyond are excellent for the pure build.
Most kids are mostly one and a little of the others, and it shifts with age. The trick is letting them grow in whatever direction they already care about, rather than the one you’d have picked.
What to check before you hand over a character creator
You don’t need to vet all six. You need one quick filter — three questions, about thirty seconds:
- Are there ads? Especially the kind styled to look like part of the tool itself.
- Can strangers reach my kid? Chat, shared feeds, DMs, comments.
- Is anything for sale aimed at my kid? Pop-ups pushing coins or upgrades mid-play.
If all three are clean, you can hand it over and walk away — which is the entire point of a good creative tool.
Then one bonus question, the one that separates a fine tool from a great one: is my kid building something, or just being kept busy? The tools worth their time send them away a little more capable than they sat down.
FAQ
How do you create your own character for free? Start with the idea — who is this character? — then shape the look, name it, add gear or a power, and put it in a story. Free tools including Mysh, Toontastic 3D and Scratch cover the look, and the other four steps cost nothing but a conversation. No purchase needed at any point.
How do you draw your own character? Start with basic shapes rather than an outline, draw the character three times before committing, and test the design by filling in the silhouette — if you can still tell who it is with no detail, it works. Then give it one repeated expression and draw it doing something rather than standing still.
What’s an OC, and what’s a good OC maker for kids? “OC” just means original character — one your kid invents rather than picks from a set. For younger kids, the safest option is a tool built for their age from the ground up: Mysh lets a kid dream up an original hero, give it gear and keep playing with it, with no ads and no strangers. If they mainly want to nail a look, Canva works well too.
What’s the best character creator for a 9-year-old? It depends on the kid. Mysh for the one who wants to invent a hero and actually keep playing with it, Toontastic for a quick animated story, Canva for a designer, Hero Forge for the gear-obsessed. Nine is in the sweet spot for all of them.
My kid gets stuck and can’t think of anything. What do I do? Take the tool away for five minutes. Blank-screen freeze is almost always a step-1 problem, not a step-2 problem. Ask what the character is bad at, or what would make them run away — then use the prompt list above. Once there’s an idea, the menus stop being intimidating.
Are free character creators safe for kids? Some are, some aren’t — “free” and “safe for a seven-year-old” aren’t the same sentence. Run the three-question check above: ads, strangers, purchases. Tools built specifically for children tend to pass; general-purpose creative platforms and browser-game hubs are the ones worth checking first.