21st Century Pictures

Background
21st Century Pictures is an Australian home media distributor that primarily focuses on foreign and art-house films. Not to be confused with 21st Century Film Corporation or 21st Century Entertainments.

1st Logo (1990s?-2002)
Logo: On a dark blue space background with a bunch of stars, a purple nebula, and even a planet, a stone structure comes rotating and zooming in towards us. Then, it suddenly stops at a tilted angle, and many yellow lines shoot in from both sides of the screen like lasers to form "21", with "ST" inside the "1". Then, pieces of the word "CENTURY" in a conjoined Stop font, fly in and lock into place underneath "21st", shining when its completed. "PICTURES" fades in below.

Technique: Very smooth and slick early 90s computer animation.

Music/Sounds: First, a rising synth cord, followed by laser sounds for the forming of "21st", and locking sounds when the segments of "CENTURY" appear.

Availability: Seen on 21st Century tapes of this time period, most notably a co-release of Akira with Festival Video.

Legacy: The space background is dark and first-time viewers will not expect a stone to be flying at them.

2nd Logo (2002-)
Logo: We see a coloured version of the last logo, this time in 3-D, zooming out on an angle. It then rotates to face the viewer on a curtain background, with a light shining on the top left of the screen.

Technique: Just the zooming out of the logo and the movement of the light.

Music/Sounds: A generic space age-sounding tune.

Availability: Seen on all DVDs by the company, mainly those of Hopscotch.

Legacy: The music of the logo starts very suddenly and can come on naturally loud. Most of the time, this logo is unexpected.