The avatar you upload does most of the work. Your expressions and head movement drive it, but everything the viewer actually sees comes from that one image — so it is worth spending a minute choosing well.
Face the camera, roughly
A near head-on image gives the most to work with. A sharp three-quarter angle or a profile leaves whole areas of the face unseen, and anything unseen has to be invented when you turn your head.
Keep the face unobstructed
Hair across one eye, a hand near the chin, a microphone in front of the mouth — each of these becomes a fixed feature that does not move the way you expect. Sun glasses are the common one: they hide the eyes, and the eyes carry most of the expression.
Even light beats dramatic light
Hard shadows across half the face are baked into the result. A flatly lit image gives you a far more stable avatar, even if the original photo is less striking.
Resolution matters more than you would think
A small or heavily compressed image cannot be recovered. Start with the largest clean version you have; a crop from a big image beats a small one scaled up.
Only upload an avatar you own or have explicit permission to use. You confirm this on every upload, and we mean it.
Try a few
Keep several avatars in your library and switch between them mid-session. Two minutes comparing them live tells you more than any checklist.
