There is a lot more discussion of the projects that he worked on and how they were made (this is most evident with the films). It's certainly typical in its structure, from rural upbringings on a farm and then Kansas City in the early part of the 20th century on to Hollywood and his start-up of drawing (with good ol' Ub Iwerks! Three take-outs from Hook It’s been 23 years since Aardman released its first feature film Chicken Run.

Mike Barrier began this scholarship in his great fanzine, Funnyworld, which I was able to read in the 1970s. Not just a plain-vanilla small-business owner, like today's franchisees, but someone burning with his own ideas, eager to put them into practice, and impatient with limitations of any kind (financial, governmental, familial). Barrier shows us a tireless innovator, a man of deep feeling, a true American original who has woven himself into the very fabric of modern culture. The author skipped from one year to another; at times I felt like I was reading random notes rather than a well written biography.Again, if you have notions about him already I don't think this will change it, and if anything you may be mad it's not addressed (it comes up literally in the last two pages). But every once in a while his eyes would narrow, the rural twang would disappear from his voice and he'd discuss financial projections for 1962, the modern art of Picasso and Diego Rivera, and Freudian psychiatry. It was of course, not to be, as neither the technology nor the design of the experience lent itself to storytelling.

The poor assumptions made during the planning were corrected by spending plenty of time joining guests on the rides and walking through the park. Barrier’s excellent work enriches both the man and the Disney features themselves, and one can look upon them with new appreciation and understanding. This doesn't mean that his own uber-creative nature made things complicated by the fact that this was the age of the movie mogul when he was the one in charge (in case you don't care much for Sleeping Beauty, and I'm glad to see an author articulate so well, better than I could, why it doesn't work as well as it should, it's due to Disney's OCD on Disneyland and live action taking him away from his original passion).As Walt became busier with the theme parks and other diversions, his animation directors took to pretending to implement his demands, showing him the same footage twice, garnering enthusiastic approval the second time around.