It might be the figure and clothes I used. Which is Sabrina from Krashwerk.
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and the clothes. Which is Rhiannon Halter Appeal for G8 and G8.1 Females.
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Which is why it don't look right. But that more like my lack of skills. Then the figure or cloths being the issue.
It's most definitely the model then. I thought it was your sliders and changes, but it's definitely the base model. Which, I agree, to each his own, if you like it then cool. But it's what really distracted me in a bad way in that render.
Besides that, I apologize for not making proper quotes, but I'm on phone and eh..it's a pain in the ass.
RE: Feet. Those closeups you posted as examples are exactly that, closeups. Face, maybe bust. What people meant by the feet is that half the left foot is in the render, half isn't. Or another example, people cutting off at the ankles. Or similarly when people cut off at the forehead.
There are more portrait lengths that people use, but a good start is the basic three. Head and shoulders which is basically a bust, three quarters which cuts off around the knees, usually below them but in a few cases slightly above and full length, which has the entire figure in it. Sure, rules can be broken on special occasions but they are rules for a reason. The closups you posted are all a head and shoulders type of framing. Or at least the ones I saw from those links.
As for lighting and composition...there's no way around it, I suggest you watch a few photography tutorials on the subject. After you do that, there's a few good plugins you can use, like IDG's lighting and cameras. But if you don't understand the basics of photography it'll be very hard if not impossible to use those plugins properly.