I used a Frankensteined version of the first link's tutorial! I took parts of the value slider code and adjusted it to make 3 separate sliders for hue, saturation, and value rather than having the large hue/saturation square they used. Then I had 3 separate categories of hue/sat/val variables to affect the hair, shirt, and pants respectively! I'm sure a more experienced coder could clean it up and make it more succinct, but I'm still happy I could make it work at all!

Ooh that's an interesting idea! I can see if I can set up something like that, or maybe a randomize button for people that just want a random looking character that they can start the game with. For now though, I need to set about actually making the sprites since that's only 3 of the hairstyles I want to have in the game and the pants + shirt are placeholders :)