[G_yoshi]

erm, you can already change the colors of sprites in a gani with the exception of what's defined as SWORD, HEAD, BODY, and SHIELD. Have you ever bothered to look inside ganis with a text editor? If you're asking to be able to change that from the outside, however, that's another story.

As for a solution to your dilemma, have you ever thought about using one of the many gani attributes and putting in a small icon that would represent the player being paused and having it float about their head?