Finally found that elusive "2.25D" look that I've been chasing forever now, and it was just a matter of using SuperMerger's cosineA blend with EnvyMix_v1 and Chrysanthemum (which is an awesome model that I heartily recommend).
This model does nice faces, it does hands reasonably well, it does coherent backgrounds, and so on. Definitely going to be my new default.

