IIRC a lot of Larian's artwork is outsourced and will have someone else's interpretation. Where the elves are concerned, I'm ambivalent: I'd prefer them to be less sinewy, but if that's the way they are I guess I should learn to do skin textures in Gimp. :p
I'm vaguely reminded of the furore over the skimpy-or-not armour in the promo artwork of D:OS and some quite opinionated comments, not all of which were helpful.