The Art of Zootopia 2 — deeper into the mammal metropolis

About the book

Judy and Nick are back, and so is Zootopia — bigger, weirder, and with a few corners of the city we never got to see the first time around. Disney The Art of Zootopia 2 is written by Kalikolehua Hurley, with input from director Byron Howard, co-director Jared Bush and producer Yvett Merino, and it picks up right where the case-solving duo left off: a mystery involving a venomous new neighbor, a conspiracy podcast, and a whole wetland district nobody's mapped properly yet.

First impressions

Honestly, it feels like slipping back into a book you already loved. Same trim size, same confident Chronicle Books layout, same satisfying paper weight — but the moment you flip past the title page you can tell the art team had a lot more city to play with this time. The palette leans a little moodier in places, which tracks with a story that digs into an old Zootopia mystery instead of just introducing Judy to the place.

Content

Disney The Art of Zootopia 2. 172 pages, hardcover, Chronicle Books, written by Kalikolehua Hurley. Released November 18, 2025, alongside the film.

Characters

This is where a sequel artbook either earns its keep or doesn’t, and this one does. Gary De’Snake, the sweet but genuinely venomous pit viper at the center of the mystery, gets pages of design work exploring how you make a snake sympathetic without losing the “wait, he could kill me” tension the story needs. Nibbles Maplestick, the beaver who hosts a true-crime-style podcast about Zootopia’s weird corners, has some of the funniest expression sheets in the book. The Lynxley family — Milton, Cattrick, Kitty and Pawbert — get a full spread each, which makes sense given how much the plot leans on old-money Zootopia society. And Judy and Nick aren’t forgotten either: there are some lovely pages showing how their designs were softened and aged just slightly to reflect a partnership that’s had time to settle.

The journey through the story

The book moves through the investigation roughly in order, mixing keyframes, storyboard pages and color scripts to show how a mystery plot gets paced visually. What stood out to me is how many alternate story beats and scrapped jokes show up here — a few sequences clearly went through major rewrites, and you can see the abandoned versions sitting right next to what made the final cut.

The worlds

Marsh Market is the big new addition, and it’s worth the price of the book on its own. It’s Zootopia’s wetland district, home to Nibbles and a whole ecosystem of reptile and amphibian-friendly architecture that the first film never touched — reed-covered boardwalks, floating stalls, buildings that clearly had to solve for animals who spend half their time underwater. The art team also revisits a handful of districts from the first movie with new eyes, showing corners of Sahara Square and Tundratown that never made it into the original book. Isometric interior views of specific rooms and shops sit alongside the big establishing paintings, which is a nice touch if you’re into the “how would this actually function” side of world-building.

What’s inside

• New characters — designs, expressions and the personality work behind the newcomers.
• New districts — Marsh Market and the corners of Zootopia we didn’t get to explore the first time.
• Returning favorites — how the original cast evolved for the sequel.
• Color & lighting — the mood boards and color scripts that set the tone for the film.

A sequel artbook lives or dies on whether it shows you something new, and between Marsh Market and the Lynxley family alone, this one clears that bar easily.

The artwork

The variety here is the standout — you get clean digital 2D character sheets right next to 3D turntable renders, costume studies, in-world movie posters, and full storyboard sequences, all credited to the individual artist who made them. It’s less uniform than the first book, but in a good way; it feels like a real look at how many different disciplines go into one sequence. If I’m nitpicking, I’d have loved a few more of the earliest, roughest line sketches for the new characters — the book leans a little more toward polished concept work than the scrappy first-pass stuff that made the original so charming.

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Is it worth it?

If you own the first book, this is close to a must-buy — it doesn’t just repeat the formula, it actually expands the map in a way that feels earned. If you’re new to the Zootopia art books and only picking one up, I’d still start with the original for the foundational world-building, but this one stands on its own just fine.

Verdict: a warm, well-crafted follow-up that trusts you already love this city and focuses on showing you the parts you haven’t seen yet.

Value

List price is around $39 / CA$68 / £27 / €38, right in line with the first book despite the extra pages — good value for a hardcover this size with consistently strong reproduction. As with most Disney artbooks, keep an eye on it; discounts tend to show up within the first few months.

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