So to keep consistency between the customize options and the actual product on the screen, I was wondering if there was a way to create an event to change the starting color depending on the variation selected or the default if no variation is selected.

For instance, if I load a page for a 100% cotton shirts and the default product color is white then great the shirt image I have in the FPD when I go to click is set to white at default so I have consistency. However, say when I load the product page I select red from the drop down variation box and the red product image shows on the screen. Well when I go to click customize the white shirt shows up since that is my t shirt template's initial color. It would just be to redundant and bad woocommerce technique to create a separate product for every color and then create a separate FPD template for each product depending on color. There has to be a simpler way

You could use MSPC, like in this demo: http://fancyproductdesigner.com/product/sneaker-mspc/