Most attempts at a likeness fail the same way: they are accurate feature by feature and wrong overall. The nose is right, the eyes are right, and it still looks like a stranger. That happens because recognition does not work the way people assume it does.
Work on the silhouette first
At the size a character is actually seen — an avatar, a profile picture, a face in a list — you are recognising an outline. Face shape and hair shape carry almost all of it. Everything inside the face is doing far less work than it feels like while you are editing at full size.
So spend your first few minutes on two things only: the face shape and the hairstyle. Squint at the result, or shrink the browser window until the character is thumbnail-sized. If it does not read as the right person at that size, no amount of nose adjustment will save it.
Pick one hook and commit to it
Everybody has one feature that people describe first — heavy eyebrows, a wide smile, glasses, hair that goes its own way. Find that one thing and slightly overstate it. A caricature that is 20% exaggerated on one feature reads as more accurate than a careful average of all of them, because that is how memory stores faces.
The corollary matters just as much: understate everything else. If you exaggerate three features, they compete and the character reads as generic-cartoon rather than as a specific person.
Use position before you change parts
The most common mistake is cycling through part shapes when the actual problem is placement. Before swapping the eye shape a fifth time, try the spacing and height sliders. Wide-set eyes, a low mouth, a short forehead — these are proportions, and proportions are what make one face different from another.
- Eye spacing changes apparent age and personality more than eye shape does.
- Mouth height is the single strongest age signal available. Lower reads older.
- Brow height sets the expression. A few steps up looks open; a few steps down looks intense.
- Face size against fixed hair changes how much forehead shows, which reads as build.
Check it small, and check it beside the source
Two habits catch nearly every error. First, look at it small — most of what you fuss over at full size disappears. Second, put the reference beside the editor rather than working from memory; memory smooths faces towards an average, which is exactly the failure you are trying to avoid.
Know when to stop
There is a point where extra adjustment makes things worse — the face drifts towards a generic average as you sand off the very asymmetries that made it recognisable. If a change does not survive the squint test, revert it. Undo isCtrl/Cmd + Z in the editor and it goes back a long way.
A note on likenesses of other people
Building a character based on somebody you know is normal and fine. Publishing one is a different question: keep it affectionate rather than mocking, and do not publish a likeness of a private individual who has not agreed to it. That is site policy as well as good manners — see the terms.