After receiving some feedback from one of my lecturers I decided to try simplifying the designs of Shen Nung and his Assistant once again. Below you can see the results:

In comparison to the previous iterations of these designs, not a lot has changed. I removed a few elements from both the designs, for Shen Nung, I removed a lot of the leaves he wears around his neck and changed the style of his beard. I also removed his extra layer on his robe, although it looked nice, it would have been quite difficult to animate and draw from certain view points. For the Assistant, I didn't change much at all, I simply removed the extra layer underneath her robe.

By changing these details, I hope we'll have an easier time animating these characters.