Well what I really want to do is change my wolverine from blue to gold… 
Thanks blenderallday for going the extra mile and posting the .blend file and the detailed post. By the time I saw your response I was already neck deep in a ridiculous workaround involving transparent planes, text converted to meshes, and boolean difference modifiers, so I finished the project that way to meet a deadline rather than start over.
And thanks Kaluura for taking it to the next level. Next time I will definitely use Cycles. So much easier and straightforward. I’m not familiar with it at all, but it’s obviously time to learn.