It looks confusing.
you can inflating and deflatting objects with ncloth but not changing radicaly change the shape geometrie when it is inflate.
I suggest you use blendshapes for that. And when you ve got your animation ready, you transform your object (with blendshapes) in ncloth
or you can do the anim of eatch objects with ncloth, and make the transition in compositing...
cheers