Lost Concept Art and Deleted Storyboards from The Matrix (1999)
Forgive the hyperbolic title. The following images are from Starlog Magazine #261 and were featured in an article dedicated to the art of The Matrix. These images are not included in the book Art of the Matrix and for the majority of fans have probably never been seen. There are a handful from story boarded sections of the film that were either not included in the AotM book or were replaced with later revisions of the scenes.
First up Trinity waiting on her bike.
The chase through MetaCortex was storyboarded however its not included in the AotM. The reason I suspect is that the storyboards were titled "Cortechs Capture" and the images may have still used the older name for the company, "MetaCortechs", that was changed during production to "MetaCortex" after someone discovered that "MetaCortechs" was a real company.
Next we have a few images from set concepts of the Oracles apartment. Her her kitchen and the waiting room.
Worth noting that this is the only image of the Oracle from production material that's been released to the public.
Next we have Neo's apartment
The Lafayette Hotel
The Neb's cockpit
Speaking of the Neb. Here is a storyboard from our introduction to Sentinels.
Early drafts of the screenplay emphasizes the falling temperature as the Neb shuts itself down to hide and we can see that reflected in the breath of the four characters. Neo and Trinity are easy enough to identify. The character on the right is Tank based off another storyboard he appears in that is in AotM. No idea who the character on the left is.
In 1996 Morpheus is actually described as still wearing his iconic sunglasses in the real world. This is taken from a storyboard that was eventually replaced or removed as the scene it shows was cut. In the 96 draft while Morpheus waits for Neo to get out of the Matrix before activating the EMP and the sentinel actually manages to blow a hole through his arm right before he activates it.
Cypher's Betrayal was also storyboarded but is not included in the AotM. Not sure why other than the exact series of events between Cypher missing Tank, killing Dozer, and then being killed by Tank moved around a bit between 96 to film. So it may have been left out because of changes. It could also be issues related to Marcus Chong as Tank only appears in a single board in the AotM book.
Continuing on with the Real World
Here we have concept design of a pod born head.
And in this image
We can see an early look at what infants look like. Notice how the jack is much larger than it is in the film. Looks as if the early idea was that the human grows into their plugs rather than them needing to be replaced.
Here's a costume design concept of Trinity's look.
And finally
Here is a larger image of the History Lesson. Both of these are included in the AotM however they are incredibly small. So here's a closer look at the two boards.