recreating pocoyo

Ok so I thought the best way to find out the technique would be to try and recreate the render style used in Pocoyo. That way I can use the same techniques when it comes to lighting/rendering my piece. Now I have absolutely NO background knowledge on lighting/texturing/rendering so hey...we're off to a good start...pffft. Anyway I constructed a simple set in Maya resembling that used in Pocoyo and after a chat to Mr. Grigsby heard of rendering with global illuminations:

".........yes" i said...it was a school childs pasta face project...completely blank. 

However after opening the old book on texturing and lighting as well as reading on the Pocoyo blog they used global illumination, I have started to fiddle round with the process.  Its looking quite crap if I do say so myself...but...its a start (I keep saying that I know) and hopefully something will click with a bit of tweaking. However, another spanner in the works as I continue to read on about another technique called final gathering...the two processes seem the same except final gathering is supposed to allow a slight bleeding of colours onto nearby surfaces as well as brighten dark areas with bounced light. 

And now....some images

Heres the set (o wow aren't you impressed! hahaha) Yep 3 planes and a load of poly cubes shapes to look like building blocks. Scene is light with 1 spot light

Ok so here we have combined occlusion layer and render pass of the blocks. Scene was lit here with two directional lights from left and right to get rid of shadows....I've just remembered I probably left on Maya default lighting so that could be why its so bright when the two layers were added together in After Effects...idiot. 

Ar yeah another test which after having the realisation about the first would sort of answer that...I'd got rid of the directional lights here and kept the remaining above spot light. Added occlusion layer to the render pass by way of lighten and you get this...strange outcome....idiot.

Here I've turned off Maya default lighting and er...it seems to be no different so I take it further tweaking is required tsk...never bloody simple these things ay. It actually seems to be worse with the spotlight.

Next attempt, I've got rid of the spotlight and changed to 3 directional lights to represent the key fill and er....third light whose technical name escapes me at present (yeah thanks a lot brain...werhey to embarrassing me on that one). So the lighting appears to have immersed the scene in white which I suppose is on its way but could be because the lighting is so harsh. 

It was then I realised that each time you change the lights you have to reset the caustic and global illumination settings in the attributes editor...idiot. I dunno...I really havent got a clue here!