Albino Blacksheep
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Type of site | Entertainment website |
|---|---|
| Owner | Steven Lerner |
| Created by | Steven Lerner |
| URL | AlbinoBlacksheep.com |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
Albino Blacksheep is an animation website made in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that publishes member-submitted digital media. Most of these are movies or games created with Adobe Flash. The website also features image galleries, audio files, and text files. Additionally, there was a mobile section that provides ring tones, screensavers, and wallpaper for mobile phones.[2] There is also a downloads section featuring reviews for popular free software.
In addition to the media available on the website, there is also a large user community that takes advantage of the forums and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel; members of which often offer tutorials on the production of the type of media found on Albino Blacksheep.[3]
History
Albino Blacksheep was founded in 1999 by Steven Lerner to promote his band of the same name, which was started in 1996. Very little information on the band Albino Blacksheep exists. In 2000, Steven took a web design course and redesigned the website. This new incarnation contained rants, graphical images, and a video stream from Lerner's video camera. Perhaps Lerner's first famous work was in 2003, with his site's Google bomb for French military victories.[4] Since then, the site has been growing in popularity, currently receiving about 1.50 million pageviews per day.[5]
Albino Blacksheep is also famous for being a major portal for Flash animation and animutation (a Flash animation style created by Neil Cicierega in 2001). The popular Webgame Musical Lantern can exclusively be found on this site.[citation needed] The website also helped the band Tally Hall achieve some notability after posting their music video Banana Man.[6]
On April 1, 2007, Lerner changed the homepage to a joke homepage, designed to make people think that the site had been bought and turned into "Google Animations". The joke was reinforced by a fake blog stating that "Albino Blacksheep has been acquired by Google Inc. for roughly $32 million in stock options. The deal was discussed over a casual breakfast in Mountain View, California between the Canadian-born founder of Albino Blacksheep and the Google co-founders and CEO. Plans are underway for Google Inc. to tie its services and software into the former Albino Blacksheep website which will go by the new name Google Animation."[citation needed]
Name
According to Steven Lerner, the creator of Albino Blacksheep, the name is an intentional oxymoron; by definition, a black sheep cannot be an albino because it quite obviously possesses skin pigmentation. He also points out that "black sheep" can also be interpreted as "outcast" and that the site's title could be interpreted to refer to an albino outcast.[7]
Albino Blacksheep frequently refers to itself as ABS.
Notes and references
- ^ "Albinoblacksheep.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
- ^ Mobile Section on Albinoblacksheep.com.
- ^ Tutorial Section on Albinoblacksheep.com
- ^ French twist from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, posted March 25, 2003.[dead link]
- ^ Site Stats as of March 23, 2006.
- ^ Quirky Michigan band pops into Rehoboth by Kim Silarski of the Gannett News Service, posted December 17, 2005.[dead link]
- ^ The Meaning by Sners of Albinoblacksheep.com.