I won't re-UV just yet hehe. Still would like to explore this cylindrical map route a bit further.

Major breakthrough, well for me at least. I am in the process of untangling overlapping UV points in space. It's my understanding that no area can overlap the other unless of course you want to share the same texture space (planks on a fence for instance).

I realized the whole face does not have to be one shell, so I am starting to map tricky pieces separately. Started with the inside of the mouth and the eyelashes. Not done the ears and there's still overlap in the mouth and nose that I have to deal with.

Question: I figure I can attack the ear same way. Map it separately from the rest of the face. However, due to the anatomy of an ear you get very complex overlaps in 3D space. How do you attack UV'ing ears while keeping them somewhat easy to paint on later?

Question 2: Judging by Mike's face texture from his website, he's not mapped the ear separately, but instead I think he's done some tricky manual untangling.

How? Once I understand that (along with all other approaches)I am hoping I can arrive at my own preferred method of doing things.

Take care now folks.