In something like SDL I would be able to just blit my bitmaps onto a new surface, in construct2 the only real option seems to be pinning sprites, that's all well and fine, but gets messy with complicated things (for example, a pinned on head would need to bob 1px every few frames to sync with a walking animation)
I have a follow up question about performance:
Take the thought example of taking 3-4 base bodies, and randomly assigning them faces, now putting a bunch of these actors on the stage/layout... Is it more performant to render a pre-rendered image for each actor, or is it more performant to pin 20 different heads on 3-4 base bodies. (effectly reusing the bodies and some of the faces)