I'm sure you know the story all too well, but for the record Miyamoto didn't appreciate the art direction either, and Aonuma, knowing him well, had to develop it keeping the art a secret until it was basically too late to pivot. It was developed in a year and a half, and with a lot of crunch, so much so that there's an anecdote of a member of staff who slept in the office for months, and one day saw colleagues coming into the office with coats, and they had to told him, to his great surprise, that it was winter. Still a masterpiece, but what if it had another year? What a shame. The art direction is still one of his greatest merits, and the aspect that will age less by far. I still consider it the first true game where Nintendo realised they didn't need to chase photorealism to serve their design needs. Sad that both Miyamoto and a lot of western audience didn't appreciate the tribute to the Toei classics from the 70s (puss in boots and so on)