You may have seen Mike Hollingsworth’s Flash-animated series Nature Break on Fuel TV’s Stupidface, the same network that aired his series Low Tide. He’s got handfuls of Nature Break episodes, and this one, titled Roommates, is one of my favorites.

Parker Simmons was behind the Flash-animation joystick on this recent parody video titled Dr. Mario with Lyrics. The song was created by Brentalfloss, who sends up the 1990 Nintendo game Dr. Mario, which mimics Tetris but with a pill and virus theme.

Mike Parker recently brought this Seth MacFarlane spoof to life. I suppose MacFarlane’s dominant block on FOX should be renamed “Animation Recombination.” The short, titled Seth MacFarlane’s Secret, was written by Dan Gurewitch.

ColdHardFlash.com is officially 5 years old today!

In November of 2004, I was working at Warner Bros. Animation and me and a small crew of Flash-converts were still fighting an uphill battle. We were trying to convince the studio chiefs that Flash animated series were a good idea. The seminal Flash-animated series ¡Mucha Lucha! was already well underway, but I think my superiors thought the show’s budgets would magically be cut in half and rainbows would burst out at every schedule meeting. The truth was somewhere in the middle, and animating a TV series with this “web-toy” was still kind of a nutty concept. So I figured I would blog about the prevalence of Flash-animated series around the world, and somehow justify that this was a growing trend. The gorgeous and successful Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends had just premiered on Cartoon Network, which made things a bit easier, but I’d heard of dozens more out there. With a little research, I discovered 9 series that were either in production or planned and that was my first post, titled Flashing the Studios (2 of those series, Omega Dome and Katbot, never surfaced).

Regular posting over the next few weeks brought a trickle of regular viewers, but what I saw as more of a research project had helped my cause at WBA. Spreading this information around internally helped justify further Flash exploration, and soon handfuls of Flash-pilots were in production, including Coconut Fred and Johnny Test, which both made it to TV. To their credit, WBA executives like Marge Dean and Christopher Keenan were way ahead of me, and even if they didn’t use the software, they understood that a revolution was underway.
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The second season of the Flash-animated series SuperNews! kicks off tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT, as part of Current TV’s new hour-and-a-half Thursday Night Block Party. So, get your monitor wipes ready, ‘cuz below is a short from the new season called Emoticons Have Cybersex.