>>56625341>Viola and Alexa were present in the original "aliens" draft, with Viola being a Ghost Gym Leader, who uses her camera to capture paranormal occurrences. Alexa was planned to be a "missing character" who disappeared years ago, presumably abducted. When the alien plot was dropped, Viola was still a Ghost Gym Leader who searched for ghosts on film, with Alexa being turned into a more professional journalist. Ghost was deemed too hard to be the first Gym, so Viola was reworked into a more naturalist Bug-type photographer. Alexa's concept art and anime appearance gives her far more prominence than a "missing character" would suggest. Additionally, Viola's concept seems more tied to the 3DS camera gimmick than ghosts, and earlier prototypes show a very similar design to final Viola.
>Grant and Korrina were the first two Gym Leaders really designed during the "sports" stage of planning the Gym Leaders , and more or less stayed the same, although Korrina was given the role of the Mega Pokemon Prodigy later on. Weirdest of all, Grant was originally wheelchair bound, with strong upper arm strength which he used to climb rocks.Although possible, Korrina's design could also be explained as being the representative of the Roller Skater trainer class and Roller Skates gimmick, which makes more sense than her just being one of many sporting gym leaders.
