For those of you, like myself, who have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Amid Amidi’s Full Steam Ahead!: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball, there is bad news regarding it. Amidi announced yesterday that Disney has successfully blocked Chronicle Books from publishing it. Sadly, this isn’t too far out of the ordinary with regards to how Disney, like Google, behaves as they try to have every aspect of the entertainment world under their direct control. You can read about the situation here.
Since the biography is ready to go, my suggestion (not that anyone cares) is to take it to a publisher less indebted to the Mouse (Chronicle makes its living publishing those “Art of” books that come out for every CGI movie, so there was obviously a bit of conflict of interests going on), and publish it without the ©Disney images. And in the place of each of them, place Kimball’s “BULLSHIT” stamp (pictured above, and not approved for publication by Disney) with an explanatory caption.
Or publish it using his non-Disney output. There’s scads of it out there and I think it would be more illuminating that the Disney stuff that many are already familiar with.