@ralph I have an idea, its a big one but just might work.

What if when we are on the creation mode/edit mode we could swap to another section where further changes could be made to the stickfigure, for example, a section were you could select nodes using the same selector as the image croper for when creating groups or whatever and than an option to choose a gradient segment which could be overlapped over some segments and than ‘molded to it’ leaving only the gradient but it still maintains the segments shape(not the gradient the previous actual stickfigure/set of nodes), and a 360 wheel will be avaliable to use for the gradient.

If you dont understand that than I dont blame you, its a big idea. Ask away.