Hussar said:
On the eyes of our Valenor, well, considering he's not human, that pretty much chucks out most of the proportions bits.
Not really. Even if you're not human, proportions are still important. If you don't get the proportions right, things start to look "wrong."
That said, like all "rules" in art, they can be broken. You just need to know how and why you're breaking it. If you do know why and how, you can really use it to great effect. Anime/Manga seems to use this idea a lot.
Eyes that are too large, legs that are slightly long, bodies that are on the thin side, poses that are almost impossible (if not impractical) muscles that are more angular then curved... Again, I'm no expert in Manga art, but these are all things Manga artists tend to use to make their images "pop."
As someone pointed out, those eyes proportioned to the head, should be bending around the side, but they aren't. As an effect they sort of stand out more, and cause you to focus on them a bit. (linger might be a better word...) Like meeting the eyes of the enemy.
How tall are Valenor elves though? I have no idea. Standard elf height? I'm going to call that one questionable since there seems to be some disagreement.
It doesn't matter how tall the elves are supposed to be. You have the take the image and proportions as a whole. It's not just heads tall, but also how many heads down the shoulders fall, the stomach, how many wide the shoulders are, the fingers... everything basically. If you mess with it, you've either just effed up, or you're going for a certain effect.
Western art uses the techniques as well, but Anime/Manga tends to lean towards the use more often then not, and in effect drawling attention to it. It's a highly stylized art form.
That's where I see the influence in the D&D stuff. Again, I'm not saying that any one of the artists purposefully set out to draw an Anime picture. Art is just incestuous. It feeds off of itself. No artist says "This will be my style." They just grow into it. They unconsciously merge different styles and ideas into one that is their own.