As the spouse of an illustrator, I applaud the author for hiring an actual artist. We've seethed at the way artists work was scraped online for the training of these models, recreating their very style for the creation of these infringement engines.

The finished product benefited greatly. There's nothing quite like working with a genuine expert who knows the rules and tradeoffs on things like competition, color, etc. Author did good on providing the illustrator with a detailed brief. When the illustrator takes those guidelines and applies their style and training to the product, magic happens.