Lmao cheating. Thanks for the link! I was gonna avoid doing too much painting, but after looking at those models I just might have to! XD
well actually one of the links uses a UV gradient atlas kind of solution--so you might have a couple gradients for your texture and then you place your UV shells on different parts of the gradient.
oohh, that sounds good too. ( o3o)~ Might try that first and see how it goes lol.