I would definitely credit the artist for managing this! We developed a system where I would describe to him what I need, and he just makes it without confirmation, and I take whatever I get and spin it so that it works! This time he designed the characters first, and it had white outlines like a sticker, so I thought, hey that looks like Paper Mario, and we locked all assets into that theme. And I would just take whatever he throws at me, basically no edit, no backseating. Hope this helps.