Right i have a working solution...but it isnt going to be fun

I'm about mid way through testing this process and its working so far.

Basically we create a kind of frankenstein monsters out of our gnomes using textures.
Theres two ways in which you can texture something...Using UV mapping or Projecting.

We all know what UV mapping is, Projecting is simply that, you create a placed3d texture which instead of laying ontop of the mesh of you model projects onto it.
Because projected textures are...projected and arn't part of the model you can move the verts around as much as you please and the textures don't move.

So the way that we get it working is we have the blendshaped sections of our models as projected textures and the rest of it UV'ed.
IEIts in no way ideal and i havnt tested to see if its going to work well - unless the textures are done pretty perfectly it might be glaringly obvious that they done match...and im not sure how we're goin to line up the projection with the UV's...so alot of plotholes(the more you look at it the more you see) If another solution comes up we'll probs drop this idea...but its something at least.