Tek Jansen, the animated series spawned by The Colbert Report, is back with the first new episode since the writer’s strike. This episode, titled For each great master was once a lowly student in a school of them, is the second chapter of the second series. Production was handled by Flickerlab, who are reportedly in production on six additional episodes.

Creative Director Harold Moss oversaw the design and animation team, which included Phil Lockerby, Simon Ampel, David Michael Friend, Frank Digregorio, Max Porter, Craig Wilson, Micah Cohen, Pedro Davies, Will Pittas, Jeff Lee, Anand Duncan and Rachel Hoffman.

Thanks to Christopher Siemasko for the tip.

The second season of Comedy Central’s Lil’ Bush premieres tonight with an all new episode titled St. Patrick’s Day. Kevin Federline adds his voice to the show as Lil’ Karl Rove - or MC Rove. This Flash-animated series is prepped in the States and then shipped to Bulgaria for production. Entertainment Weekly called the series “A juvenile pile of manure” but The Hollywood Reporter gushed, saying it features “some of the sharpest political satire on the small screen.”

New York’s FlickerLab has created a follow-up parody to their original parody American Leaf, which starred Great Big Leaf. The new Flash-animated :45 spot, titled The People vs Leaf, was ordered up by the American Legacy Foundation, who accuse Big Tobacco of “consciously misleading the public about the addictiveness of cigarettes.”

Written by Comedy Central Senior writer Lesley Keene, the commercial started airing on Comedy Central in early December. Harold Moss acted as the Creative Director on the project, and by Animation Director Nikolay Nachev and Frank DiGregorio, who helped on the 2D animation.

Wrapping up a year in laughs, Comedy Central called upon Hollywood-based animation studio Six Point Harness to kick off their Last Laugh ‘07 show. The show was hosted by Lewis Black and starred Dave Attell and D.L. Hughley, all of whom were caricatured in the 3:30 minute Flash-animated short titled Last Laugh Squad which opened the show.

Flickerlab, a New York-based design and animation studio, has joined the Colbert Report production effort. New episodes of Stephen Colbert Presents Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad 7: The New Tek Jansen Adventures began premiering on September 12th, starting with a visit to Jansen’s early years in Beginning’s: First Dawn which can be seen below. Backgrounds were designed in Photoshop and compositing was completed in After Effects, but all of the storyboards and animation was produced in Flash. On the Flash front, Animation Director Phil Lockerby was aided by Simon Ampel, Alissa Harris and Adam Sacks, an active CHF community member.

Previous episodes of Tek Jansen were produced by J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, who are better known for their work on Beavis and Butthead and 6 seasons of SNL’s Saturday TV Funhouse, which included The Ambiguously Gay Duo, starring… Stephen Colbert.

Ken McIntrye’s Super Special Dog has officially premiered on Comedy Central. This Flash-animated series aired on the Web Shows block, and will now begin running on comedycentral.com - with new episodes each week. Here’s a promo clip which also features scenes from the new show Window Seat:

For more on the premiere, check out Ken’s blog.

Comedy Central’s new Flash-animated series Lil’ Bush premiered last night. The show first premiered on the ailing Amp’d Mobile, which just filed for Chapter 11, and tvsquad.com’s Adam Finley just wrote a rather scathing review suggesting that the show itself is bankrupt.

According to an article on toonzone.net, the show is hand-drawn, then imported into Flash for more detailed animation. Sugarshack Animation, a studio in Bulgaria, produces the animation, and Finley writes that it appears to be “created with the first version of Flash ever, and sometimes their mouths don’t even move when they’re speaking.” Ouch.

Here’s a behind the scenes clip one of the mobile episodes for your review.

I found a few chuckles in the first made-for-TV episode, which can now be seen at comedycentral.com. The line “what happens in Iraq, stays in Iraq,” worked for me; and when Rummy murmurs through the whole show, I swear he says “ridin’ dirty” one time.