Illumination

Background
Illumination (also known as Illumination Entertainment) is an American film and animation studio founded by Chris Meledandri in 2007 and co-owned by Universal Pictures, a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal.

The company was formed after Meledandri left as president of 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios in early 2007. While at those companies, he supervised or executive-produced movies including the first two Ice Age films, Robots, and Horton Hears a Who!. After leaving, a deal was announced positioning Illumination as Universal's family entertainment arm that would produce one to two films a year starting in 2010. During the summer the following year, Illumination acquired the animation department of the French animation and visual effects studio Mac Guff, and formed Illumination Studios Paris.

The studio is responsible for the Despicable Me, The Secret Life of Pets and Sing franchises, and the movies Hop, The Lorax, and The Grinch. The Minions from the former franchise are the studio's mascots.

(July 9, 2010-)
Nickname(s): "Scared Minion", "Bunny Minion", "Crushed Minion", "Triumphant Minions", "Singing Minions", "Scared Minion II", "Excited Minion", "Singing Minions II", "Triumphant Minions II", "Minion + Snowball", "Scared Minion III", "Singing Minions III", "Crazy Minion"

Logo: Each film released by the company has a different variant, but they all involve the Minions (the popular side characters from Despicable Me; usually Bob or Stuart) doing a comedic skit in front of, or interacting with, the large stacked text "ILLUMINATION ENTERTAINMENT" (with the former written in Futura Condensed, and "ENTERTAINMENT" in a more conventional version of the same font below).


 * Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 (ABC airing): Stuart the minion peeks out from the right side of the screen, anxiously greeting the audience. Then, all of a sudden, the text appears behind him. Stuart is clearly frightened by the loud music that plays as it appears, and as the music ends, he stands stunned, and then falls over. He then crawls off the screen.


 * Hop: Stuart stands in the centre, staring at the camera, and Dave, wearing bunny ears and a cotton bunny tail, is prancing to the right while carrying an Easter basket and tossing candy. Dave shows off his costume to Stuart, who is not amused. Dave takes off the ears nervously, and Stuart looks back at the camera.


 * The Lorax: The name looks different. We see Stuart cutting down a Truffula tree with a chainsaw, while Tom observes. Lou the Barbaloot from the movie then falls out of the tree, eating some Truffula berries, and crushes Stuart. Tom slowly backs away nervously.


 * Despicable Me 2 (most prints): Again, a different design for the text. Minions Stuart and Tom stand at the bottom right corner of the logo. Stuart sings "TA-DAAA!", then Tom shoves him aside and also sings "TA-DAAA!". Stuart then shoves Tom and sings "TA-DAAA!" once again, and then the two minions then start yelling "TA-DAAA!" at each other and start pushing and shoving until Stuart shoves Tom off-screen, and triumphantly yells "TA-DAAA!". Tom then chimes "TA-DAA!" off-screen, causing Stuart to mumble in frustration while glancing out at the audience.


 * Minions: The preceding Universal Pictures logo has a five-Minion chorus singing along with the logo theme, and one minion voice continues to sing the closing high note as the logo fades in, revealing the five-minion choir, and Stuart, the minion in the center, is still singing the high note as the others watch. Stuart finally runs out of breath and falls flat on his face, then weakly holds out a hand for the others to lift him up, but quickly puts it back down as the other minions exchange glances.


 * The Secret Life of Pets (prototype): Stuart is seen teasing a puppy by pretending to throw a ball. He continues until a group of dogs comes in, and one starts to bark. Stuart then throws the ball, chuckling nervously, but the dogs instead start chasing him offscreen. Then, a chihuahua runs after the group of dogs, barking until it goes offscreen. This variant did not make it into the final movie for unknown reasons. This is also the first and so far only variant in which a minion does not look at the camera.


 * The Secret Life of Pets (final version) and Despicable Me 2 (NBC airing): The background fades in from black. Bob walks in from the right, scatting a tune. After a little while, the text "MIN" and "ION" (perhaps not coincidentally, the word "Minion") turns on and flashes briefly, while the light above the "I" in "MIN" glows. The rest of the text turns on the same way. Bob gets excited, shouts the company name twice, and squees.
 * A version that starts where he says the company name was seen on the shorts The Secret Life of Kyle and Minion Scouts.
 * There is also another version without the "ENTERTAINMENT" text. This can be seen on a trailer for The Secret Life of Pets 2.
 * Another one exists without Bob, which was seen at the start of four short films (Mower Minions, Norman Television, Weenie, and Yellow is the New Black) and the end of Minions Holiday Special. This version is still.
 * On How to Draw a Minion, the logo is inverted (black text on a white background) and remade in 2D. Like The Secret Life of Kyle and Minion Scouts, it is cut.
 * On the first trailer for Minions: The Rise of Gru, it starts where Bob squees.


 * Sing: Four minions are shown Bob, Stuart, Mel and Kevin. Kevin plays a harmonica, then sings "La" notes. He then sings the company name and Mel and Stuart join as the chorus, whilst raising their arms in the air, and their singing makes the text glow. Bob, who doesn't get the idea, screams the name with a crazy look, giving the text too much glow, causing "MIN" and "ION" to lose power and turn off. He stops and looks at the text. He looks at the screen, and says "Whoops!" as the other minions stare in disappointment.
 * On the trailers and TV spots, we see Stuart, Kevin and Bob in the center laughing. Also, they looked pasted on the template rather than added in.


 * Despicable Me 3: Three minions are seen, Kevin, Stuart and Mel. Kevin clears his throat and tries to say the company name, but Stuart knocks him out with a vase. He tries to do the same, but Mel hits him with a hammer. Bob comes by with the fart gun from the first two movies. As Mel is saying the name, he stops to question the fart gun, to which Bob sprays gas. Mel faints in disgust. Bob then says the name and chuckles. Mel farts on Bob and he shakes his hand in disgust.


 * The Grinch (trailers):
 * The text is off. Bob turns a flashlight on and says the name in a dark manner, laughing maniacally afterwards. The text suddenly turns on and he runs off in fear.
 * The text appears above at first. Carl is seen in the distance with a party blower, Kevin, who is close to the camera and annoyed by the blower. He then grabs Carl with the blower, pushing him as they move out and the text drops down.
 * The logo is covered entirely in snow, with snow also falling throughout. Stuart and Kevin are seen wearing Christmas outfits as they play with tambourines, while Bob plays in the snow, shouting out the company name as he sticks out his tongue. This is also seen at the start of the Minions Holiday Special.


 * The Grinch (the film itself): Bob is on the right side of the screen, holding a sparkler, and says the company name. Snowball the rabbit from The Secret Life of Pets (voiced by Kevin Hart) drops down from the top of the screen and yells the name, and startles Bob as pyrotechnics suddenly spray over the logo's stage, burning Bob's feet, while Snowball laughs manically. Then some sprinklers turn on, dousing the flames and covering Snowball in water. After Snowball says "Oh, man.", Bob gives his sparkler to Snowball, and the logo's text brightens up the screen to start the movie.


 * The Secret Life of Pets 2: A ball bounces under the logo. Six dogs pull Stuart, who is yelling "Stop-ah! Stop-ah!" at them. The dogs crowd at the ball and Stuart smiles. As the ball bounces off, the dogs face the direction, and Stuart screams the company name before he gets pulled away, the dogs barking as they do. The logo then cuts to black.


 * Sing 2: The animation is completely different compared to the other ones, and so does the text design. As the lights turn on, we see a closeup of Stuart, Bob, Kevin, and a load of other minions(including Otto and Mel). Bob then leads them in song as they sing the company name as they clap along while the camera slowly zooms out to reveal the text above. At the last second, the "ILLU" and "A" in the name abruptly blackout (a mirrored reference to the previous film's variant) as the screen turns off.


 * Minions: The Rise of Gru: Stuart swings past the text on a disco ball, calling out the company name as and  lights follow. As the ball swings around, it knocks out some of the letters and Stuart tumbles off. When he gets back up, he notices the remaining letters spell "MINION". He turns to the camera excitedly and stutters "Min-min-min-", before the disco ball swings back into the frame and hits "ION", pushing it into "MIN" and crushing Stuart between them, thus creating "MINION". Stuart then says "Minion...", muffled.

Variants:
 * On the first two trailers for Hop, there's a short version of the Despicable Me variant in which it just shows Stuart peeking in, but the text is already there.
 * Some trailers lack the minions, such as the Minions and Sing trailers. Also seen on video games based on Illumination films. This version is also still.
 * Starting with Sing, the name is three-dimensional.
 * Starting with the second trailer of Despicable Me 3 and the film itself, "ENTERTAINMENT" is removed.

FX/SFX: The minions and the text, animated by Illumination themselves. None for the still versions.

Music/Sounds: Just the minion(s) (voiced by Pierre Coffin) making noises or saying/singing the company name. On the Despicable Me variant, a loud, bombastic three-note fanfare is heard as the logo appears, kinda sounding like the Viacom "Wigga-Wigga" logo. None or the opening theme of the trailer for the still versions. On How to Draw a Minion, it's the same as The Secret Life of Kyle and Minion Scouts, however, only Bob's voice is present.

Music/Sounds Variant: There used to be a version of the Despicable Me variant on the company's website that removes the footstep sound effects from the Minion, the fanfare sounds a little different and is louder and a little more bombastic, and the sounds when the Minion falls and crawls off-screen are different. Stuart's sounds are still the same, though.

Availability: Common. Seen on all of the company's films. Formerly seen on Illumination's website. The prototype variant for The Secret Life of Pets is unused, and can be found on Facebook. Also seen on the web short film How to Draw a Minion (2020).

Editor's Note: This logo has gained notoriety for its constant use of Illumination's mascots, the Minions, and opinions will vary wildly based on whether you find the Minions charming or annoying. The Sing 2 variant is generally considered the best even by those who dislike the other logos, however, and some think it should become the main logo on future films. Some have also proposed that the Minions could be absent, and have some other Illumination characters (doing what the Minions did in the prior films) substituting them for a few releases.