Whenever an actor's(player, showimg or otherwise) color values are changed, be it red, green, blue or alpha, the body is rendered invisible. For example, if I change the player's alpha to .5, the body is invisible until the player moves. It's more apparently with NPC's/showimg's where updating is less likely to happen.
I thought this was a fixed a LONG time ago?
edit: Actually seems to happen whenever a gani is visually changed with a script, including zoom and rotation and all that.