Cars is a Pixar Animation Studios success story, which has spawned sequels, spin-offs and tons of related merchandising. With the approach of Cars 3, this large format, hardback book shows the different stages the visual ideas went through to make them come to life on the cinema screen.

John Lasseter the director of Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011) and executive producer of Cars 3 provides a short foreword where he notes, “I love that the movie’s story stretches from the gritty pioneers of the sport in Thomasville to the next-gen racers and the spectacular modern race track in Florida”.

Ben Fee, the director of Cars 3, writes the preface where he tells of his childhood love of drawing, which began with copying cartoon characters and drawing scenes from science fiction films. Even now in his professional life he still finds he is inspired by his creative team who created thousands of drawings and paintings for the film.

The introduction by production designers Bill Cone and Jay Shuster tells of how they approached the world of Cars, and in the early stages, looked at how they could incorporate automotive high fashion and celebrity cars into it. They crafted the settings from googling and physically visiting Florida, Georgia and Carolina, meeting people on the journey and looking at racing facilities.

Cars 3 shows a new group of exciting racers have come on the scene, and Lightning McQueen is no longer the young upstart. The book illustrates the numerous sketches, and even clay models, of the new cars to make them look just right. To make them stand out, they created new car styles, logos, racing car graphics that contrasted with the old designs and fresh new colour schemes.

Each new character in the script is thoroughly researched, indeed the upstart Jackson Storm took years to develop. Jay observes that, “Storm’s design had to be a hybrid of pushed and refined forms unlike any we’ve seen compete in the Piston Cup race before. Most importantly, Storm had to be a living, breathing contradiction to everything McQueen is”.

This book shows the sheer attention to detail poured into this movie, and members of the production team tell of how how their research and sketches evolved and changed to make this an exhilarating adventure worthy of old and new generations of Car lovers.

THE ART OF DISNEY PIXAR CARS 3 / AUTHOR: JOHN LASSETER / PUBLISHER: CHRONICLE  BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW