Tips on rendering/lighting a low-poly, cartoony scene in cycles?

[dongalator]

Currently I have a low poly fan art model of a character that I’m pretty happy with. Now I want to have good lighting and render settings to use, but I always get stuck or unsatisfied at this part.

Here is my model currently

Here is my scene setup atm:

And here is the render

My main question is the little glare around the model where they eyes, teeth, and neck/head meet. I’m not sure whats causing it or if its possible to remove it somehow. I’m also curious on whether there’s a good setting of lights and such that will make it look more appealing, as it seems boring right now. I’m also never sure whether to have ambient occlusion on, shadows on, what color the surface background to be, what the light settings like bounces and size does, or if theres some node that will help it look nicer.

Sorry if this is a loaded question, rendering always frustrates me since I’m never really happy with my results, and always look very similar.

[grillage]

I recently bought a really good book by Jeremy Birn. It is called Digital Lighting and Rendering. I can recommend this. In the meantime, you probably want to try a set-up with more than one light. There are online tutorials that explain things like 3-point lighting. This might help. In the end it is about trial and error. Set a viewport to be rendered and play with the settings until it looks good.