BTW, your approach to lighting is all wrong.  The example you showed was an image rendered with raytrace lighting and perhaps a better skin shader construct for it's character.  I see that you have nostril glow in second attempt, making me believe that you are rendering with depth map shadowing.  You also have a tremendous amount of skin glow indicating that the skin textures are probably plugged into another channel other than Diffuse_color.  My suggestion, if you plan to venture into something more realistic for your comic, is to invest time analysing and reworking shader content for your models.  You are looking to produce a comic in one day which I think is not a realistic approach.  Especially if you expect realism.  Comics require a storyline and a storyboard, with careful planning and snapping dialogue.  Scenic approaches should be simplistic for quick renders, no displacements, no bumps.  Expect to use more DoF focusing to concentrate on the main characters or action.  But you are still talking about investment in time.