Well, I might have answered my own question with a little bit of research.  Difference in both facial and body proportions. Noted here for posterity.

http://imgur.com/a/NnmKx

I tried making my first image. I started out with Azami because I figured her hair would be the easiest to model, but I'm not sure that was the case.  It came out kind of OK, but she doesn't look loli enough to me, and I'm not sure why. Eyes could be bigger, and I think there's something with the shape of the head. Ideas?  In the meantime, I'm going to take a break to spend some quality time with Senzin'in Nagi and try to figure it out.

http://imgur.com/a/Var3l

It's actually pretty easy to get expressions through 3D rendering, but my heart leans toward anime style because I've gotten used to and rather fond of the iconography. I'm going to experiment with doing the bodies through 3D to get the proportions right and adding the faces in post work. Maybe even today.  We'll see. DAZ Studio's own "anime" content sucks. There's just no way to get the same effect with it.

I found a copy of "Understanding Comics" and it looks pretty good. The problem is, I'm having to retrain myself to read left to right.

Life is full of little decisions. Right now I can't make up my mind whether to make the characters fairly realistic or go for a more anime style. I love those big, limpid loli eyes, but realism has some logistics advantages.

Shucks! Now you're making me feel committed. :D

I thought I'd drop in and mention that I haven't forgotten this. I've been developing the plot and laying out the panels. In lieu of developing drawing skills, I've learned to do manga renders in Daz Studio, sort of in Blender, not so much in 3ds Max. Now I have to model a house, a tea garden with a koi pond, a school, vehicles, the palace of a goddess, hell, and other environments, not to mention a lot of characters. I can find some content free online but hardly all. And I'll have to make my own hair I guess because I can't find the styles I want in current Daz content. And somewhere spend a bunch of money for more character morphs. All this has to happen between other projects like living, so it's taking a while. But once all the modeling stuff is in place, things should go a little faster.

I'm glad someone got some fun out of it. I guess that's one of the reasons writers write.  Quite a lot of my stuff starts out in slumberland, tapping the potential of the subconscious.  You ought to try your hand at actually writing a story.  You never know where it might lead.

These things are always a tough call, but I think I'll have to go with Febrie. Someone wrote that she was TOO loli.  Is such a thing even possible?

I recently joined the church of Ding Dong Goddess, so ofc she is my choice.

I'm not a fan of card games, but either holding or playing that one makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know I haven't been here in a while, but that doesn't mean I'm GONE.  Lots of things happening IRL; it's easy to get distracted.

A lot of my stories start out as dreams, and every now and then, there's a dream that just has to be written down.  This is one of them, and one that might interest some folks here.  Not polished for publication.  Rated "R". 

http://www.duanevore.com/docs/loli-power.pdf

Apologies for the distractions.

Aw, never mind. It seemed right and was easy to change, so I went for it.  Curiously, I thought of "moon-child" before it dawned on me that "Tsukiko" was a real name, and I knew the kanji, yet it didn't dawn on me to write it that way.  Go figure.

You know, I was just looking at my sig pic and started wondering if I should have written "Tsukiko" in Japanese entirely in kanji: 月子.  Does anyone really familiar with the language know for sure? How they write names both impresses and baffles me.

Well, I have done some experimenting. Heading in the right direction with Mizu, but there are some issues.  The toon camera and manga shaders are both glitchy; I'll probably have to scour the Internet for solutions. Plus, I'll need some more head and body morphs. The former is a matter of time, the second is a matter of money, and I tend to be short on both. I might pull out the digitizer tablet again and tinker with the old-fashioned way again, too.

To other creative souls:
alex: I checked out Dimensional Chaos and realized I'd read the prolog when I first signed on here. Now I've read farther, and it's definitely interesting. I started watching Angelic Layer, which I'd never seen, and so far your story is more interesting.

Kuro vi Lolitannia: I've started reading Chitose, too. Your efforts are not wasted. :)

Welcome! I'm glad someone can do it. We'll be keeping our eyes open.

I thought I'd pop in to mention that I have not abandoned this project. There have been some crises IRL that have been a distraction. I've learned the basics of Manga Studio, and think I now know how to render convincing manga characters from 3D models and thereby bypass the 10,000 hours of drawing practice. I no longer consider this cheating because I get the impression that quite of bit of commercial manga is produced like that nowadays. I'll start some serious experiments with that in a week or two. I have the overall plot worked out overall and in semi-detail for the first 12 chapters, but only to the panel level for chapter 1 and part of 2. I thought I'd introduce some of the characters here, abbreviated from the actual character sketches so that I don't give too much away. I'm keeping with Japanese names, culture, and folklore. I hadn't planned a harem thing, but it sort of naturally worked out that way.

The Protagonist

Ishii Hideki -- Middle school teacher in Tottori. Dedicated and kind of nerdy, quite a bit like Aoki-Sensei in "Kodomo no Jikan", even down to being a virgin. But he's more confident as a teacher. Like Aoki, he is deeply committed to the education and welfare of children. To make matters later on more interesting, he is a warrior against child sexual abuse, and is a primary member of the school's prevention and response team. And there is more to his ancestry than he knows.

The Lolis

...including the chapter in which they first appear

Mizu Ainofukaido (ch. 1) -- A 10-year-old blonde girl in traditional twin ponytails who shows up naked in Hideki's koi pond one evening. She is quite intelligent but knows nothing of the modern world or technology. Hideki figures out right away that she's from someplace weird, but he has no idea just how weird. She starts out rather tsundere, but softens quickly. Militant about guarding her virginity, but probably not for the reason you think. Reminds you of: Astarotte (Astarotte no Omocha) except with lighter hair.

Tanaka Hayate (ch. 3) -- A 14-year-old student with shoulder-length brown hair in Hideki's homeroom. She has had a sizzling crush on him the entire year and is convinced he's the ideal candidate to take her virginity. Outgoing, with strong leadership qualities, but easy to make jealous. She's suspicious of the relationship between Hideki and Mizu, and following them is what almost gets her killed one night. Reminds you of: Suzumiya Haruhi (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu).

Yamamoto Kaede (ch. 5)-- A fifth-grader at the school, who is so much a tomboy that the staff has given up trying to get her to wear a dress. Some of the kids not in her PE class don't even know she's a girl; she has more balls than most of them and has no problem using the boys' rest room if it's closer. (But she's straight and cis-gendered.) When it comes to anything outdoors, she is completely fearless. Reminds you of: Hirakawa Natsumi (Kyou no Go no Ni), but she's even more of a tomboy and isn't afraid of the dark.

Kanako Azami (ch. 7) -- An 11-year-old with black hair down to her waist, and who wears a Gothic Lolita dress and black tactical boots. Even black panties. More to the point, she carries a mysterious black sword that even ghosts and demons fear. She talks like Hit Girl and "lives with one foot in hell". People think she's Hisa-Me; don't screw with her. Reminds you of: Kagami Kuro (Kodomo no Jikan). You know that "kuro" means "black", don't you?

Takihana (ch. 13?) -- She's a water sprite. At 15, she's the oldest of the harem, but being a water sprite, she's still a DFC loli. Shortish green hair that wears like a crown. She's getting interested in losing her virginity, too, and, well, sex for sprites is a whole different thing. They're all girls and they have to find one-night-stands among humans. Reminds you of: ... well, I'm coming up dry on anime, so let's look at games. Somewhere between Saria (Zelda: Ocarina of Time) and Meru (Dream of Mirror Online), with maybe a dash of Tinkerbell thrown in.

Kajima Yuki (ch. ?) -- The smallest and biologically youngest. Yellow hair and a couple of hundred years older than she looks, but NOT a vampire. She holds a dark curse that has left her withdrawn and uncertain about relationships with people she doesn't have to murder, but she wants to learn. She scares people that even Azami doesn't scare. Reminds you of: Oshino Shinobu (Bakemonogatari)

There are more characters, of course, but if I started describing War Demons and Tortured Dark Souls, it would be too much of a spoiler.