There’s loads of Flash-animated holiday cards popping up this year, and here’s 3 of my favorites so far. The Brothers McLeod created this one for Ripplecups:

Here’s one from the talented team at World Leaders Entertainment:

And ‘Uncle’ Xeth unboxed this little holiday beat-down:

With primaries in both Texas and Ohio, today is a pivotal day in the American presidential election process, and this Flash-animated short by Xeth Feinberg helps set the tone. A Political Quickie: How To Be a Media Pundit, which bowed yesterday at 236.com, details the step-by-step process of how to be more like Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly. You may know Xeth’s previous work which includes Queer Duck: The Movie, Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln and his recently revamped original series Papu Smash.

Xeth Feinberg, the director of Queer Duck: The Movie, created a series of Flash-animated shorts back during the dot-bomb era that put a tidy, little bow on the crumbling web world. It was titled Papu, and the big, blue monster only knew how to smash stuff.

Well, for this holiday season, Xeth has created a new Papu episode titled A Smashing Holiday. Music is by Sam Elwitt and Rose Bevans provides the voice of Mrs. Claus.

Xeth was interviewed here at CHF back in 2005.

‘Queer Duck – The Movie’ is due on DVD on July 18th, as reported here back in April. The DVD is currently available for pre-sell over at Amazon, and it’s listing at $13.99 for 75 minutes of Flash-animated wackiness.

Variety, the entertainment industry news magazine, recently gave a strong review of the DVD, and said it “registers surprisingly vividly on the bigscreen, deserved a theatrical shot before its July 18 DVD release.” Take that, Paramount! ‘Golden Blaze’ shouldn’t be the only Flash-film to get a stab at the silver screen.

Alright, I’m off my high horse now, and I should probably give kudos to Paramount Home Entertainment for funding a feature-length LGBT cartoon. Either way, I would’ve loved to have seen this get a wide theatrical release.

Here’s an excerpt from the Variety review that give praise to Xeth Feinberg, the director, and his crew.

Tech credits are intelligently primitive. Feinberg and Richard Codor’s unshaded, blocked-out character design unabashedly delights in pure two-dimensionality, while background artist Jon Ehrenberg’s large monochromatic blocks of color (Salmonella’s Restaurant awash in a coral hue) recall UPA abstraction or Maurice Noble’s Frenchified backdrops for late Pepe LePew cartoons.

Xeth was inteviewed here at CHF back in November of 2005.

Ryan Ball from Animation Magazine recently posted an article announcing the release date of ‘Queer Duck: The Movie.’ July 18th is the date Paramount Home Entertainment has decided to re-introduce the world to Queer Duck and his friends Openly Gator, Bi-Polar Bear and Oscar Wildcat. Ryan also point out that this will indeed be the first Flash-animated feature film from a major studio. There’s been other feature-length projects like ‘Lil’ Pimp’ and ‘Golden Blaze,’ but none from a big studio like Paramount.

What the article missed was naming the actual director – Xeth Feinberg, whose recently discussed the movie here at CHF.