Hi there
L8ERALgames
I wondered whether you'd be prepared to share any hints as to the process and possibly the character base/morphs you used to create Molly and other characters. The toon(ish) look you've captured is so effective, such an excellent balance of styles, I (and I'm sure others) would be really interested to know more.
Of course I completely understand if you'd prefer not to - the same way a chef guards the secret of their most successful dishes! And I also apologise if you've already discussed this elsewhere, I'm very new round here.
My sincere compliments on your work, it really is highly unique in a vast sea of comics made using the same stock Daz characters.
Since after STH1, all my characters are just dialled in using Daz characters. i start with a base g8.1 and dial everything in.
i can't remember exactly what molly is, but generally my characters are usually 15% of this, 15% of that etc until i get something i like.
For the toonier styles, i generally use between 5 and 15% of either TG4 (toon generations 4) or the other toon style by 3dUniverse on daz. If i've dialled in other toonier characters, then it'sll be closer to the 5 so their heads don't get too big.
body-wise, i THINK on that one i also dialled in roughly 11% of a body i bought on gumtree. can't recall the artist the body is called cherry, though he has another called jay21 which is just as good. i found he had an armor on renderosity and the model he used in the armor was highly exaggerated and i liked it. it gives her the curves. i've been using that body to lessen the err "childlike" look toons can end up with which create issues (especially if you dial in a few % of Growing Up morph to get them looking "teen") i don't want to deal with regarding age of the character as my intention was never to create that.
This is actually the biggest challenge i have with toon models - trying not to make them look too young. It's what's got me in trouble with Patreon a lot and made me think of moving away from using toons. It's hard not to make them look young because toon is toon. If you render some characters without external items (such as cars) nearby, they can look younger than they are intended. Honestly, I'd advise it's more of a pain in the ass than you think unless you want to go the whole bolt-on boobs look. Then you're fine. Mostly. So, yeah, I keep that in mind when designing characters a lot more now than i used to. Before, i never really cared.
Final thing I can say is i often buy a lot of "extreme" looking characters, such as those by krashworks (krashwerks?) on renderosity. you might look at these and think "eww", but if you add about 15% or so of them into a toon character, it can really make a difference. i'm a sucker for the krashwerks body and have used it instead of cherry or jay21 sometimes, too. my next comic with the superhero toon did this.
some of my favourite toons i dial in are:
Bette (g8) from daz
brielle from daz
vika from renderosity (hameleon) - mostly some of her hip morphs or body or the head at around 5%
Toon Girl from Daz - only needs about 5% max
toon princess from daz
ugaro just released two characters (doris and something else) on renderhub and i started using that
otherwise, all the rest are just starting with any character from daz, and then dialling in mixes of the above. best tip for this is don't choose something which looks toony as your base (which you dial in at around 50-70%). if you do, it gets too out of proportion with the head. i usually pick a realistic character as the base.
skins are usually all Mousso, but i edit them in photoshop to remove some things i don't like (genital textures, shadows under boobs etc.).