I've experimented with doing comics/stories with Poser/DS

I want to do my comic in one day but for some reason the pics i make for my comic look plain , they dont look like others do it where it's a picture but it looks as if the characters are alive.

Any techniques for creating great pics for comics/stories that look alive?

Maybe i'm not doing good lighting, is that what my problem is?

Here's a pic from one attempt i made.
Notice that it looks plastic and it doesn't look like the characters come alive