Change some non-solid extra tiles into an orange facing right crewmate face, then put those tiles over the face of the crewmate. This can also be used to make custom expressions.
the problem with that is that then there is no ambient color change that usually happens with sprites
What do you mean by "custom tiles"? Do you mean modifying sprites.png, because then the face direction of all crewmates will have to change.
you are wrong
you can simply copy the crewmate moveset onto another continuous row of sprites and then use
changetile to set createcrewmen and the player to the moveset with the correct directions