Thanks Jay, I actually used your tutorial to help make the jacket (though mine was a bit rushed).

On the side of facial expressions, I set about 35 deformers as blendshape targets and applied these to a deformation buffer before applying them to the character's head. I have some pics but am not working on my computer at the moment (waiting in uni for my interim assessment at 12).

The jaw rotate options, the tongue options and the controls of the eyelids were also set in the blendshape window by adding attributes to curves and using the set driven key. Therefore all of my characters expressions can be created using the sliders in the blendshape window.

Unfortunately as time is pressing on I probably do not have the time to change my controls, but I am eager to hear your methods as they may prove incredibly useful in future rigs. Cheers