See the making of The Monster in A Monster Calls art book

The new film A Monster Calls centers around storytime. But with protagonist Conor’s (Lewis MacDougall) mother sick in bed, the task of storyteller falls to a giant tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson), who appears to him every night at 12:07 a.m. with a new dark fairytale to tell. The Monster’s stories (featuring sorcerers and princes and ambiguous morals) are themselves animated, but the centerpiece of the story is obviously the big guy himself. In A Monster Calls: The Art and Vision Behind the Film, out now from Insight Editions, the process of creating the creature, starting with sketches and on through green-screen, is fully detailed.

In the excerpts below, fans can see how the Monster started out as illustrated sketches as animators figured out how to adapt Patrick Ness’ illustrated novel for the big screen, and then became fully-fledged.

A Monster Calls goes wide this weekend. A Monster Calls: The Art and Vision Behind the Film is available now and can be ordered here.