Here’s the finished project for which I made all of those cardboard props! Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata helped take the pixellated photos of the props and costumes, and even helped out by wearing them. When I brought everything into After Effects, I had to scale Max and Ru horizontally to make them chubby enough for animation!
The rain was made by gluing construction paper raindrops to some string, and cycling through three different strands of drops (purple, light blue, and dark blue.