Elements of 80s Fantasy Style

 I've written before about the implied setting of 80s TSR art, but it's really only a subcategory of more widespread trends in fantasy of the 80s. Obviously, with something as broad as a multimedia genre, it's difficult to encompass all the works that appear in that time period with any sort of list of features, but I think the following elements are ways that the body of fantasy of the 80s tended to be different from what came before and to an extent, what came after.

The Triumph of the Barbarian

The barbarian (thanks to Conan and paperbacks with Frazetta covers), loosely defined, was the predominant protagonist type of the Sword & Sorcery subgenre, but in the 80s it may squeezed out the knight to become the predominant fighter variant in general. The barbarian films, rushing to cash in after the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982), had a lot to do with it, probably. A lot of fantasy warriors in the 80s just had the classic barbarian look whatever their origins.

Ninja!

The 80s was the third "ninja boom" in Japanese pop culture, but it was the first time North America really took notice. Ninja were part of a revitalization of the martial arts genre in the U.S., but they also crept into fantasy in the form of various black suited and masked thieves and assassins.

More Women Warriors

The 80s didn't invent the woman warrior, but they certainly became much more common then. The trend was heralded Richard Kirk's Raven series that started in the late 70s (possibly inspired by Marvel's Red Sonja?), but there were many more to come.

Glam over Grotty

Gone were the muted or moody colors of Frazetta in favor of Vallejo body-builder sheen. Medieval grime gave way to gleaming Excalibur plate armor, Royo rocker leather, and there was a lot of gorgeous hair.

The Elf and Dwarf  Move toward Codification 

The cutesy elf or dwarf of the children's story-derived popular imagining was giving way to the more Tolkienish D&D version, but we hadn't arrived at peak Tolkien "better than humans in every way" status for elves. From Elfquest to Hawk the Slayer, elves were no longer comedic craftsmen, but instead wilderness warriors. They were often depicted in Robin Hood-ish attire.

Dwarves continued to become differentiated from elves and perhaps moved closer to their Nordic roots. The most emphasized trait seems to be their warrior nature. They seem just as likely as barbarians to wield double-headed battleaxes, and they began wearing horned helmets appropriated from Vikings of earlier eras.