I've just returned from a whirlwind - two weeks of travel and festivals.

It began with an appearance at the Future Film Festival, a wonderful animation festival in Bologna, Italy, that features special effects technology - I'm not quite sure why I was invited to do a retrospective, but I'm glad I went. The audiences were terrific.

I got to sight-see in Bologna, a wonderful medieval fantasy town famous for its porticos and the home of Guglielmo Marconi, the guy who wanted to capture Jesus's voice by bouncing his speech vibration deep into space and back to earth.

I got to hang out with the tech guys from ILM, Tippett Studios and Ralph Eggleston from Pixar. I got to see "El Cid", the new Spanish animated feature from Filmax. Oscar and Giuletta took us out to a wonderful meal every night - here's me fixing the tortellini for one of our fine feasts.

In fact, the legend is, Bologna is famous for the 3 T's - towers, tits and tortellini.

And here's another famous art object, the central fountain of Neptune with the mermaids spouting water.

After a 20 hour stop-over in Manhattan, I flew to Park City, Utah. Unfortunately, "Hair High" was rejected by Sundance - my feeling is that the cut was too rough for them - or else they were tired of my films (I've had seven films in the festival) and they wanted some other animation - so I got to participate in the Slamdance festival.

After checking into my condo and the festival, the happy routine of watching films and going to parties began. My favorite films of the festival were "Memron" and "Dear Pillow" at Slamdance and "Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the SLA", "Riding Giants", "Goodbye Lenin", and "Supersize Me" at Sundance. And then, of course, there are the parties, where a lot of intercourse - artistic, business, and otherwise - takes place.

The day of my screening, I was extremely nervous - after all, I've been working on "Hair High" for two and a half years, so I was somewhat anxious to see if the film was any good. Associate Producer John Holderried, writer Jonathan Lee, Eric Gilliland (Spud) and Tom Noonan (Principal) were there to help present the film. It was preceded by a wonderful animated short called "Delivery" by Pat Smith that set up the audience perfectly.

I hid in the back of the theater during "Hair High", so I could gauge the audience's reaction - it is only a video at this point, so I can still make changes. Well, to my great relief, the audience thoroughly enjoyed the film, and we had wonderful applause at the end. The two best-received scenes were the ones with Mr. Snerz coughing his guts out and the football game with horny Zip in the chicken suit.

I did take notes about mistakes and shots I want to fix, but all in all the screening went well - so now I'm back in New York, fixing the last few shots. Watch the scrapbook for updates on the film's progress and eventual release.

The next cartoon from "Sloppy Seconds" is called "Magazines", it's a take-off on the uniquely New York phenomenon of magazine stands - these tiny booths where guys sell all sorts of publications. I loved the way all the titles mixed together, so I came up with a bizarre assemblage of magazine covers.

Bill