The Ink Tank

Background
The Ink Tank was a New York animation and design company founded in 1978 by R.O. Blechman. The company produced many station IDs and commercials with animation, stop-motion, CGI and other special effects. In 2003, Richard O'Connor and Brian O'Connell left The Ink Tank to found Asterisk Animation and it was shut down a year later.

(1982, 1990, December 14, 2002-January 25, 2003)
Visuals: On a white background, an inkwell pen, with a  grip and yellow tip, rises up on-screen and stops for a second before it starts to draw 2 arches mirroring each other while it dances around the screen. It then starts to draw 2 ears to connect the rings together, hints of a chubby nose, a detailed smirk, a fat chin, and an eye looking to the left with a bushy eyebrow, giving us a rather cheeky-looking expression. The ink pen then moves to the top of the face's head and drops out some ink causing it to cover nearly the entire top left of the head before the pen then moves into the face's right ear and tilts into position. Finally, the pen then fades to black and, in sync with the final note, "Times New Roman" appears below.

Variants:
 * A still version with an abridged theme is heard at the end of the showreels.
 * A later variant has the logo in and slightly stretched vertically. Below the logo is the text, also in :

Produced in Association with The Ink Tank

Technique: Cel animation.

Audio: A rather cheerful and somewhat muffled horn fanfare with some string plucks thrown in. The later variant has the end theme of the show.

Availability: It appeared on their 1982 and 1989-1990 showreels, while the later variant was seen on Season 1 episodes of I Spy.