It's not too bad now, you can get Photoshop CC for ~$20 a month if you can't shell out for the full price. Think of it as in investment rather than a product.
That was the multiple shell approach, basically you create an alpha version of your skin and make some duplicates of your model, each scaled outwards along the normals a bit.
Could you post screenshots of the actual low and high models? Smells like a cage issue, maybe caused by a need of a reset Xform on the low model... maybe :O
thx but I just wanted to keep it close to the concept :\ Like I wrote in the first post thats not my concept but its based on masamune shirows ghost in the shell
Here's a closeup I found elsewhere: I'm not familiar with Planet Zoo. Here it looks like at least a mix with cards to me but perhaps there are ways to get irregularity with shells, too?
It depends on the hair. For something like a bear's body you want to be using a volumetric fin and shell approach, for longer, specific shaped strands you will want something card based.