What I have been doing may not be elegant, either, but it works. I use a technique for facial animation worked out by Exciter, using Realtime Mesh Deformation. The interesting thing is that if you use this on one model, all identical models in the game are deformed the same way. So I use an action on a model out of play to deform the face, while a second visible model is using animated bones. The two seem to be completely independent of each other. But what you see is a combined facial animation and bones animation. You could search the forum for "Exciter" and "Realtime Mesh Deformation" if you want to follow up on this concept.