There were many different versions of both characters. None of them actually made it to the final film, but the entire process helped with the animation. The nuances that define the personality of each character came from drawing them over and over again in different styles. 


ANIMATION

The storyboards only showed the passes. Moments, like the boy pausing at the top of the seesaw or the girl's hair falling over her eyes when she almost drops the ball (a suggestion that was made during one of the trifecta weekends), were added to film only during animation. I didn't plan them out, but it felt like it was what the character would do. And for almost every action in the film, I was physically acting it out in my corner of the animation lab or in our living room at home as I was animating.

The transformations were fun to animate, and relatively easier to do. One of the first "secrets" I remember being taught about animation is that it is easier to animate an elaborate explosion than it is to animate a person doing a simple gesture. No one knows what a Rubik's cube bursting into crayons actually looks like, so you can make that stuff up. But everyone has seen a child run, so those things are more difficult to do because people will be able to tell if something is off.