Toonmoir
About us
Toonmoir

Toon + moir — cartoon meets memoir. Say it toon-mwah.

The story behind Toonmoir.

My mum's 70th was coming up, and my sister had a beautiful idea: a book. Not a bought one — a real one, full of the memories that made Mum who she is. Stories from her childhood, the moments our family still laughs about at Christmas. The kind of book you make yourself, because no shop could know what belongs in it.

There was just one problem. We didn't have the photos.

Some were never taken. Some were taken and lost long before digital storage existed. Some sat on someone else's roll of film, in someone else's shoebox, in a house we hadn't set foot in for thirty years. The cameras weren't there for the moments that mattered most — because that's just how it was, back then.

So I started looking for another way.

I was on my usual walk along the Altona esplanade — 8.2 kilometres of foreshore, nothing but water and time to think — when it came to me. What if I drew the memories instead? Not literally — I can't draw. But what if I described them, and let something else draw them for me?

I went home and started using AI to turn my own recollections into cartoon strips. My memory of how something looked. My version of who was there, what the weather felt like, what was funny about it. It worked — the strips were warm and specific and true to the stories I remembered. Mum was going to love this.

I enjoyed creating them.

For a while.

The more strips I made, the more I hit the same wall. Characters drifted. A detail I'd carefully described in panel three had quietly changed by panel seven. Upload a recent family photo to give the AI something to work from, and every strip suddenly looked more realistic — sometimes wonderful, sometimes just a loss of the playful, slightly imperfect quality that made the stories feel alive in the first place.

I was constantly re-prompting. Constantly correcting. Rebuilding a character description I'd already written twice. The tool I was using was brilliant at images — it just wasn't built for this. Not for memory. Not for the specific, loving, slightly unreliable way families remember things together.

I needed something that understood a cartoon strip of a memory isn't supposed to be a photograph. It's supposed to be a feeling — a four-panel version of the way your mum told the story every time you asked her to tell it again.

That's what I built.

Steve Donaldson · Founder

Toonmoir is the platform I wished existed that morning on the esplanade. A place where you describe the people you love — not upload them — and those people stay consistent, strip after strip, story after story. Where the art style you choose on Monday is still the art style on Friday. Where a first-day user and a seasoned one both end up with something genuinely worth keeping.

No photos required. No drawing skills required. Just the memory, and the words to describe it.

Your characters. Your styles. Your vault. Your family's stories — drawn the way you remember them, kept somewhere safe, ready to share with the people who were there.

Every story. Every time. Forever.

What we stand for

Toonmoir is built on a simple belief: that everyone deserves to be understood— regardless of how old they are, where they came from, or whether they've ever touched a creative tool in their life. That belief shapes everything we make.

We're honest about what Toonmoir is and how it works. We tell you when AI is involved. We tell you what we collect and what we don't. We tell you exactly what each plan includes — and we don't bury the things you'd want to know.

We think good tools get out of the way. Fewer steps. Fewer decisions. Fewer moments where you wonder what you're supposed to do next.

If we can remove a step, we do.

We do the right thing, not the easy thing. We protect the stories in your Memory Vault the same way we'd want our own protected. We don't use your content to train other people's AI. We don't sell your data. And we don't pretend a cartoon can do something it can't.

We think about people, place, and what lasts. The characters in Toonmoir are drawn without lifting from anyone's likeness. The merchandise we make is chosen with sustainability in mind. The platform is built in Australia and designed to stay here.

And we look after the people using it. No dark patterns. No lock-in tricks. No nudges designed to make you do something you didn't mean to.

Your memories are yours — the moment you make them, and every day after.

Be first to know.

No photos. No drawing skills. Just the memory, and the words to describe it. Toonmoir isn't open yet — register and we'll let you know the moment it is.

Toonmoir Pty Ltd (ABN 33 698 995 603) will use your email address for one thing only: to let you know when Toonmoir is ready to try. We store it securely, we will never sell it, and we will never use it for advertising. You can ask us to remove you at any time at privacy@toonmoir.com. Toonmoir is launching in Australia first — you're welcome to register from anywhere, and we'll let you know as we expand. Read the full notice.

ToonmoirEvery story. Every time. Forever.