Adam Phillips’ Flash-animated Brackenwood series was distinguished at this year’s Webby Awards as an Official Honoree. The awards is given to “sites and teams that demonstrated a standard of excellence.” The Webby’s are hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet,” and Phillips responded by saying that “this recognition validates the past 8 years in the dark, slumped and staring into the monitor.” He created this trailer for the Webby judges.

Several other Flash-animated series were bestowed this honor at the 2008 Webby Awards, including Dan Meth’s Internet People, Laith Bahrani’s Creep music video, Conan O’Brien & Jim Gaffigan’s Pale Force series, Kyle Boyd’s W’s World series and Devin Flynn’s Y’all So Stupid.

In the animation category, Nominees for the Webby Award include Jennifer Shiman’s 30-Second Bunnies Theatre and the Heavenly Sword shorts, both of which were animated in Flash.

NBC’s hit online animated comedy Pale Force is back for a second season. The Flash-animated adventures of Conan O’Brien and comedian Jim Gaffigan return with more light-skinned shenanigans. The series has garnered nominations at the Daytime Emmys and the Webby Awards. New episodes will be launched every Monday at NBC.com. Here’s a sneak preview of the season premiere episode:

Gaffigan voices, co-writes and co-produces Pale Force with Paul Noth, who originally conceived the series. Animation is produced by Thomas Smolenski.

Jim Gaffigan is the funniest comedian on the planet. I’ve been following his work for years now, and I’ve even created a character in an animated series I’m developing with his voice in mind. Okay, it’s out there. Now we all know I’m extremely biased towards this story, but I’m not alone in thinking he’s funny. Conan O’Brien, the host of Late Night with Conan O’Brien, found Gaffigan’s animated ‘Pale Force’ pilot so funny, he decided to buy the property. It centers on a pair of pale superheroes that fight crime with the fair-skinned powers. Now NBC has ordered 20 Flash-animated episodes of the series, which will air Friday nights on Conan’s show, NBC.com and on video-enabled Sprint phones.

The series was co-created, directed and and written by Paul Noth, a cartoonist whose work has appeared in the The New Yorker. Jim and Paul teamed up with Kapara, an Israel-based studio, to produced the episode order. Ynetnews in Tel Aviv picked up the story and explained how Kapara ended up working alongside Gaffigan and Noth.

**** UPDATE ****

In fact, the 20 series run of ‘Pale Force’ is being animated by Thomas Smolenski, who worked on ‘Ellen’s Acres’ and ‘Kappa Mikey’ at Animation Collective, and Brett Hall, who both hail from New York.