Hello everyone. I've started dabbling with the Creation Kit, and what I really want to do right now is to be able to make new NPCs and put them in the game. Specifically, I want to make NPCs with very specific appearances. I basically want the ability to have an image of a pre-existing character / person, and create a Skyrim NPC from their design.

So, I have two questions:

1 - Are there any good tutorials on bulding custom NPCs in general and then customizing their appearance? I've seen the standard "Make new NPC, dump them right into the game" tutorials which do a good job covering the technical side of things, but I really want to know more about how people are able to craft such interesting and unique-looking NPCs.

2 - Are there better face editing tools out there available than what we're given with the Creation Kit? Skyrim's default facial editing is OK if you just want to throw together a character, but beyond that it seems weak. You can't do things like actually manipulate the shapes of eyes and noses, only select from a list or presets and then move / resize them. Are there tools that give me more power and flexibility?

I've seen some fantastic custom NPC mods out there, and I'm really curious how people go about creating them.