After a great deal more effort than I expected, I was able to translate my relative success with Blythe's fur over to Dr. Gravitas' model. Challenges revolved around making the face tuft not look so point or poofy and I had experimented with a chest-tuft and navel-line of fluff. Neither of the latter were successful.
Gravitas does not have a simplified version of his underlying coloring for his skin yet, so he is near-black all over here. Even still, this took quite a bit of time to render. I am not pleased with the results. The hands are still a mess, the face is meh and dulls the expressiveness of the face. You can't even tell they eyebrows have moved :(
It'll be a long road for refinement and I'm reconsidering the geometry-based stylized fur again.