When the original Monsters Inc movie came out years ago, I totally geeked out over a book called The Art of Monsters, Inc. that I found at Borders (when that was a thing). It was chock full of all the really great concept art that was created to inspire the overall look and feel of the movie. You could see how character designs progressed, you could check out different sketches and paintings of proposed scenery… To this day, it’s one of my favorite art books. This week, not only did I get to see some of the Monsters University concept art, but I get to share it with you!

 

This isn’t concept art.

It’s the movie poster.

Move along folks, cool stuff to see ahead!!

There are no words for how much I love this drawing of Mike and Sully. Sketches always feel like they have so much life and attitude. Love. It.

Monsters Inc concept art of Mike and Sully heading to school.

Concept art gets pretty detailed sometimes. Look at all those cool monster-ready bikes!

Monsters University concept art of some of the monsters

Character design is a pretty fun part of the animation process, and I feel like it’d be even more so on a movie like Monsters University. There’s like, literally NO monsters that actually exist that you have to go off of and get right. The door is wide open for your imagination to come up with whatever monsters you want, which is pretty dang cool.

I’d be interested to know if this Monsters University concept art was hand painted or digital. I know I heart acrylics, but Photoshop is just so much faster and easier to clean up afterwards! Just shuuuuuut…. down!

And a happy Sully to wrap this up! I’m not a huge fan of sequels in general, but I gotta  hand it to Pixar. Their sequels just don’t ever suck. They may get a little complicated sometimes (Cars 2, I’m looking in your direction), but they’re consistently funny movies with great writing and amazing art and design.

Now that you’ve seen some Monsters University concept art…

Get out some pens and draw up a monster! Click on over to our facebook page and share it with the class, won’t you?

Monsters University is out in theaters now – you should go!