re. texturing.....would you consider trying to reproduce Escher's woodcut? Seems like if you had a few mats (or even one) made up of light and dark grey stripes (for want of a better word), then mapped each area individually, and for darker areas compressed the texure so the stripes are closer and it looks darker blah blah blah and turned the texture around until you had the stripes running like 'bracelet' shading on each individual form - I think it could look pretty convincing. You might have to get rid of lighting altogether, and do it all with the material.........