New to unity - how to achieve this artistic effect?

Hello everyone!

Im very new to unity and other programs (i was only an artist before this and zbrush modeling) but have been asked to help develop something for a friend. I made and colored models and put them into unity on a black background, but the problem is its not achieving the effect i want.

The first image is the one directly from unity - the models are harsh against the black backdrop and look very .. fake and old school almost.



The second image i painted over, and it is what im trying to achieve, its more artistic, full of life and color, with a bit of a blur to the harsh edges and doesnt look as fake and badly amateurish

my only problem is... I have no idea how to achieve this look in unity! I tried to set up some lighting with some spot lights but its not doing what I want (most probably im doing something wrong to be honest)

How do i go about achieving the subtle shifts in color, the blurred artistic edges, the deeper shadows, and making it look less "amateur"? there is also some subtle bump texture on the model i painted ontop that im struggling to achieve too, and some particles that float around in some specific areas.

im assuming most of these are post processing thats why im asking here, but i could very well be wrong and im sorry if i am. I have tried googling my issues but i suppose im phrasing it incorrectly because im not finding what i want.

p.s. this is for a moving scene so i cant paint it the way i did literally ontop
if these topics are too large for someone to explain, i dont mind if someone at least points me in the right direction, i just dont even know what these are called to begin searching.
Thankyou in advance

 

It looks like you might be able to achieve something similar by cranking up the Bloom in The Post Processing Stack.

 

layered shaders.. under your shader bits in Unity set your Materials number to "2".. then make a rainbow effect image, put that material in slot #2, and set the transparency to fade and give it 50%. you can get the "blurry" effect with some particals, blending the geometry with the negative space some.

 

Okay:
Maybe adding some more polys to the scene and giving the texture
a bit more detail, or painting some of those glittery things onto the texture,
might help make the scene look better.
Even a detailed normal map, could help add more details to that scene.

Doing any of the above, or possibly a bit of all, might help cut down on
the need, for lots of post processing effects too.