Character Craft Basics – Cantina Help Center

Every great character on Cantina comes down to three things: how they look, how they sound, and what they say. Here's how to shape each one.

The basics

A character is built on three pillars: an appearance (what they look like), a voice (what they sound like), and a personality (what they say). You shape each one with prompts in the editor. In the best characters, all three work together.

Before you build, take a minute to figure out who you're making.

Conceptualize your character

Start with four questions:

Identity — Who are they?
Setting — Where do they live? Do they belong to a certain world?
Topic — What do they talk about?
Purpose — What do they do? Are they roasting people, giving advice, telling jokes?

You don't have to follow this structure. It's a way to brainstorm and flesh out ideas that feel half-baked. Once you have a concept, you're ready to build.

The editor

The editor is where your character comes to life. It has seven sections:

Physical Attributes — how they look.
Profile Avatar & Video — the video that introduces them.
Character Inventory — their wardrobe, locations, and props.
Identity & Personality — who they are, how they act, and their backstory.
Voice — how they sound.
Basic Info — name, username, type, gender, age, where they live, and spiciness.
Settings & Privacy — description and tags, response style, visibility, greeting, base videos, and advanced settings.

When you create a character, you can be guided through their look, personality, and voice, or tap Skip to Editor to write every field yourself. See How to Create a Character for the step-by-step.

Let's go through the three pillars, starting with personality.

Identity & Personality

This section holds three prompts. Each one shapes how your character shows up in chat.

Identity

Who they are and what their purpose is. Their name, role, and what makes them them. Keep it tight.

Personality

How they think and behave. If you're guided through creation, Cantina drafts a starting personality, and you can sharpen it any time.

Every time your character speaks, Cantina reads this prompt to shape what they say.

Write to your character, not about them. Say "You are…" instead of "They are…":

You are a retired Navy SEAL turned full-time motivational podcaster. You scream encouragement at people to become better like you. You often mistake pain for self-improvement and are constantly putting yourself through needlessly and ridiculously uncomfortable situations to 'make yourself better'.

Include how they speak. What phrases do they use? Do they have a signature opener? Do they end sentences a certain way?

You speak like a working-class Italian guy from New Jersey. You don't use big words or abstract words, instead you always use short sentences with simple, concrete words. You talk in questions for emphasis: "You hungry? You better be." You like to add Italian-American slang sometimes: "Forget about it!" "Gabagool", "Madonn!"

Add any detail that feels true to your character: how they think, where they grew up, what they love, what they hate. Prompting 101 has more techniques and examples to copy.

In the editor, tap Suggest while you edit for ideas, or Get Suggestions to see new options for all three prompts.

Once your character exists, chat with them. Like what they said? Add more of it to the prompt. Don't like something? Write a line telling them to avoid it. The prompt grows with your character.

You're the world expert on how your character should act. Be specific.

Backstory

The formative events that shaped your character. Optional, but it adds depth. A character with a backstory has more to draw from in chat.

Physical Attributes

Your character's avatar is their profile photo, and it's the look Cantina uses to make their photos and videos, so it's worth getting one you love.

Describe the Detail (how they look), their Age, and their Environment (where they are). Be specific: hairstyle, clothing, expression, and photorealistic versus animated are all things you can prompt for.

Tap Redraw to see options. Tap the one you like, then Use Selected, and tap Save. To start fresh, tap Create New Avatar, describe your character, set their age, describe where they are, and tap Generate Face.

If it doesn't look quite right, add to your description or change it, then redraw. Keep going until it feels right. See Making Character Avatars for tips.

You can change your character's avatar any time in the editor.

Voice

Your character's voice is how they sound in chat, in videos, and in rooms.

You have two ways to make one:

Prompt a voice: describe it in text.
Clone a voice: record audio or upload a video.

If you describe a voice, be descriptive, the same way you would for personality or appearance. Do they have an accent? Are they young or old? Nasal? Angry and authoritative? Whatever you're looking for, include it. See How to Give Your Character a Voice for the steps and tips.

Settings to fine-tune

As you refine your character, these settings help shape how they show up. Each one has a default, so you don't need to change anything right away.

Setting	What it does
Description & Tags	Shown on your character's profile so people can find them. Tap Regenerate for a new description, or Add Tags.
Response Style	How much your character says at a time: No Preference, Short, Medium, or Long.
Visibility & Privacy	Bot Visibility makes your character visible to people in your network. Prompt Visibility lets others see their prompt.
Greeting	How your character introduces themselves when someone adds them to a room.
Base Videos	The videos your character uses to make quick videos.
Spiciness	In Basic Info. Pick Mild (default) or Spicy. Mild keeps your character from going overboard but still allows unpredictable, occasionally edgy replies. Spicy allows edgier replies.
Image Creation	In Advanced. Pick Selfie or Draw. With Selfie (default), type "selfie" with what you'd like your character to do in the image. Draw makes images without your character in them.
DJ Ability	In Advanced. Turn it on to make your character a DJ. Say their name and ask them to play any kind of music, like: [Username], play throwback songs from the 2000s.
Default Response Settings	In Advanced. What makes your character respond, the keywords they listen for, and notifications.
Message Memory	In Advanced. How many past messages your character remembers: from the room, from themselves, and from other characters.

When you create characters on Cantina, make sure they follow our policies.

Keep going

How to Create a Character — the step-by-step walkthrough.
Making Character Avatars — get the look you want.
How to Give Your Character a Voice — prompt or clone a voice.
How to Change Character Settings — everything in the editor.
Prompting 101 — foundations of writing strong prompts.
Starter Prompt Library — templates to copy and remix.
Cantina Glossary — quick reference for terms.
Creating & Using Bots — community standards for creating characters, parody, and impersonation.