Wow! you guys are awesome! Thanks for taking the time to post all the step by step images Teyon, much appreciated! Sorry to hear you're not feeling well, hope you get better soon (chicken soup with lots of cayenne pepper always helps me). And sorry I wasn't able to be on here for so many hours, just been a very busy day, and it's 2am here now, so I'll be posting and checking replies tomorrow after some much needed rest!

So basically, if I have this straight.....you used Poser to give you a character and in a pose you needed, then exported it as PNG to be imported into MS5. Then you seem to use MS5 kind of like I have noticed similar as when I've used layers in Gimp. So you're using a second layer over the original PNG Poser image, that way if you make a mistake the original PNG remains in tact and you can try again, or experiment with different colors. I think I understand. 

So in this example, Poser wasn't really used for anything except a basic character in a pose with basic clothing applied and then render it out. (Hope I even remember how to properly attach clothes! been a long time). A friend of mine who has been using Poser for a long time just replied to an email I sent him, and he suggested the very same process using Poser, and mentioned using the preview render instead of firefly. He also mentioned that Poser Pro 2014 has quite a good comic rendering engine, (but I have 2010 version and would have to spend more to upgrade). Another interesting thing he said was he just picked up a copy of Anime Studio, and said I could maybe look at that for simple characters. It has a character creation wizard, and as I'm not so interested in the actual animation features it may be enough. I'll have to look into that a bit further though, don't know enough about all this yet.

I'm also remembering the kind of characters that poser has, and can't remember if it had any more simple characters like the ones I mentioned, similar to Family Guy or Simpsons, those type of cartooney looking characters. Poser seems to have the human looking characters covered quite well, so I'm good there. With some practice I could probably draw some very simple cartooney characters, however, my question would be this........would I have to keep drawing the same character over and over every time I want that character to have a different pose?? That seems like a lot of time consuming work that I'm trying to avoid going into this. I don't mind spending time creating, but I don't want to get discouraged because I'm spending too much time trying to draw, and if it's taking too long to create a completed comic strip. That's why I was looking for simple 2D characters, and backgrounds that I can drop into a strip from a library.I would love to draw everything myself, but I'm not an artist per say, so that would have to be developed over time, and would slow me down some as far as finishing some comic strips.

Speaking of backgrounds......we really haven't touched on where I might be able to find some backgrounds to use. It's too bad you say MS5 won't import or use PDF files, because I know Comic Creator has a lot of pre-made backgrounds. I wonder if there's a way to convert a PDF file over to a format that MS5 likes, maybe Jpeg or something? Then I could have access to a lot of ready made stuff from CC, in addition to having Poser's character set and posing tools.

Whoa, nice image RorrKonn! Thanks for the additional suggestions as well. That is a good idea about running them through filters, god it's been so long since I've used Poser though, I have to brush off the cobwebs. I got so frustrated with that program before, I almost don't even want to re-install it! I was really out of my league with what animations I was trying to do with it before though, this seems a lot simpler than that at least.

I was looking at the differences between MS5 and MS5 EX, not sure I completely understand why one is better than the other, but then I'm tired too now, so will look it over at Smith Micro again tomorrow. Cheers guys, and thanks so much for taking the time to explain this process.

Glad to help. Yes, you got the idea down pretty much. I used Firefly because it lays down shadows on the figure a bit better than the preview renderer. As for the Character Creator in Anime Studio, as the guy who made most of the parts used in the character creator, I can say it will result in simple character shape that's far more toon based. Anime Studio's not really meant for Comics but there's no reason you can't use the same method I did but replace Poser with Anime Studio.  Sadly, the new toon characters I created aren't in Poser Pro 2010, they're in Poser Pro 2014. They're created in a style similar to Dreamworks/Pixar/Sony Imageworks. 

They're fairly simple to work with as characters go. Maybe they'll entice you to upgrade? :D

MS5EX has more features than MS5. It's meant more for professional work, so if that's not your goal, you may be fine with MS5 instead of MS5EX.