How to make material look like soft plastic toy

Question

There is an artist who creates 3D renders that look like they're small plastic toys, and I just love how they come out.

The texture looks a lot like the soft plastic used to make kaiyodo bottlecap figurines. It appears to be slightly pourous, soft, not too reflective/glossy. I figure there may be some level of subsurface scattering going on, but I'm too novice to be sure. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Another Example from this artist: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRwQgrKr367/

Example of figurines: https://kyogres.weebly.com/uploads/5/6/4/5/5645491/7251023_orig.jpg https://kyogres.weebly.com/uploads/5/6/4/5/5645491/3581926_orig.jpg https://kyogres.weebly.com/uploads/5/6/4/5/5645491/6821678_orig.jpg

Answer 1

It doesn't take much Subsurface for this effect. For most plastic the Subsurface color should be a white, and pale colors can have more Subsurface than darker ones (in the .blend file you'll see the iris and pupil materials have lower Subsurface numbers, while the skin is paler than the more saturated orange Base Color).

Lighting can be important for showing off the material to best advantage (note the light shining a bit through thin areas like Suzanne's ear). And for a more realistic look I'd recommend a Cycles render with Filmic View Transform.