Weston Woods

Background
Weston Woods is a production company founded in 1953 by Morton Schindel, that produces animated short films and audiobooks based on well-known children's books. The company was acquired in 1996 by Scholastic. The company is based in Norwalk, Connecticut.

1st Logo (1954-1996)
Logo: On a black background, we see three green, stylized trees, with two blue Vs connected together, from the left to right tree, resembling a "W". The lowercase words "weston woods presents" or "a weston woods release" are seen below.

Variants:


 * For the "presents" variant, said word can be either beside or below "weston woods".
 * Sometimes a copyright symbol is placed after "weston woods".
 * A filmed version exists.
 * On early shorts we see different text that says "produced by morton schindel at weston woods studios weston, connecticut, u.s.a.".
 * A black and white version of this variant can be found on Millions of Cats.
 * An early version of said variant has "connecticut" shortened to "conn."

Technique: None.

Music/Sounds: None, or the closing theme of the short film.

Music/Sounds Variant: On 16mm prints of the Harold and the Purple Crayon short, the opening theme is heard.

Availability: Seen on early Weston Woods shorts (including those from Gene Deitch/Rembrandt Films) starting with their first short film, Andy and the Lion. It was also spotted on 16mm prints of the Harold and the Purple Crayon short; VHS and DVD releases cut this out.

2nd Logo (1996-)
Logo: On a black background, we see the stylized trees from before, now slightly amended and in a darker green color, zoom up. Then, a flash occurs in the middle of the trees, turning the middle section into a sky blue "W". The words "weston woods presents" or "a weston woods release" fade in below.

Variants:


 * On later videos, the logo used the 2003 Scholastic logo.
 * Starting in 2011, the logo is in widescreen and it was enhanced.

Technique: 2D animation.

Music/Sounds: A piano stinger is heard during the Scholastic logo, which then turns into a whimsical folk theme.

Music/Sounds Trivia: An extended version of this theme would later be used as the background music to an intro used on later Scholastic Video Collection and Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVDs.

Availability: Common on many Weston Woods videos and DVDs, starting with Harry the Dirty Dog. The 2003 variant can be seen on their later videos and Cinedigm DVD releases.