I might stele this idea.
Though, I'm sure as hell not re-spriting every goddamn bubble, maybe I'll just fade it out a bit.
so we have to recolor all the chat bubbles?
a much easier implementation would be to have 2 separate sprites with their own lists of subimages.
1 sprite would have 3 subimages: the default bubble, the red thought bubble, and the blue thought bubble
the other sprite would have 1 subimage for each image that can appear in the bubbles.
Basically what would happen is that the bubble would be drawn above the character's head, then the message would be drawn on top of that.
The bubble code would need to be reworked a tad, but it'd work.
Wham!