With a vibrant and engaged mod-scene people have been customising the look of their Minecracft characters for quite some time now. But, not in an official capacity. That's where the new Minecraft Character Creator tool comes in, currently in beta.

How it works is fairly straight-forward, and will give people surprising control over what amounts to a few blocks stuck together in person-form. Here's the details from the latest Patch Notes.

Introducing the Minecraft Character Creator

• Personalise your avatar in a number of ways, including body size and shape, limb replacement and tweaking of eyes, mouth, hairstyles and colours, facial hair and skin tones
  
• More than 100 items will be available for free. There will also be a range of custom accessories, created by the Minecraft team, available for purchase
  
• The Character Creator is currently available to beta testers, but will also roll out to Minecraft Earth, as well as all other Bedrock platforms like iOS and Nintendo Switch, once the beta has concluded
  
• Traditional custom skins can still be imported as before, on Windows 10 and mobile, using the following steps: Profile > Edit Character > Classic Skins tab > Owned > Import > Choose New Skin

Existing skin support will continue, and with Minecraft available across multiple platforms an official character creation tool is long-overdue.