About 6 months ago, I had the chance to work on some Pixar concept art as part of an internship. About a half dozen of them were collages made for The Incredibles. And I mean straight up "cut bits out of a magazine and glue them down like you did in first grade" collages. They were very cool looking. Someone at Pixar clearly has a thing for German expressionism-the use of perspective in these pictures was straight out of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".

Another was a design for a truck from Cars. The original picture had been cut in half, spread apart, taped to a new paper, and a whole new center section drawn in.

This was all done with obvious skill and talent behind it, but they were clearly a product of "getting shit done fast".

I had no idea they were calling such finished pieces "concept art" these days. The last time I paid much attention to concept art was probably books about Star Wars from like 20 years ago, and that meant pencil sketches with notes scribbled in the margins. I always thought it was cool to see how ideas evolved from initial sketches into final designs, and it sucks that fans of movies/games/etc are now being denied that glimpse into the creative process in favor of yet more marketing bullshit.

Concept art can go through many stages. I think of it as including anything from napkin sketches to sculpted and painted maquettes, to fully tailored costumes. It's anything used to give people the visual feedback they need to make decisions on how the final thing will look and feel.

Same here. I like concept art but it also had kind of an uncanny valley aspect for me, like you're so familiar with a character that these early versions are slightly alarming.