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Finale for Final Fantasy Studio
polar_bear` writes: "Looks like the folks who animated 'Final Fantasy' are on their way out of business. Salon has the scoop. Despite being visually stunning and fairly entertaining, it didn't manage to bring in enough bucks to cover production -- even though Aki Ross was hot enough to make Maxim's 'Hot 100' for 2001. Square Co. is looking for a buyer for the Honolulu-based movie production unit. Anybody have several hundred million dollars I could borrow?"
way back when, they said "it's the last movie we'll ever make" because they're so over their budget.
-ac.
(this was from here.)
"But why did they have the whole org on an island in the Pacific?"
Because it's cheaper to fly to Hawaii from either side of the Pacific than to cross it. Travel time from the contiguous US and from Japan is about the same.
"Studios on Hawaii, the most expensive state for anything in the United States,"
IIRC, the cost of living in Japan and Hawaii are about the same. Both places have to ship everything in. And Hawaii is physically half-way between Japan and the contiguous US, so people from either country have similar travel times.
Not to mention, with the Hawaiian population being what it is, they're far more likely to find bilingual help (English and Nihongo) there locally than any place else in either Japan or the US.
It is called "sunshine dollars" and if you are currently working in Silicon Valley you can expect your salary to be reduced by at least 75% if you come to Hawaii and cost of living will remain the same or probably go up. Hawaiian business is about tourism, the need for computer people is miniscule, the hotels don't need much and most of them are part of a chain with mainland IT anyway -- but everyone wants to live in paradise. Low demand, high supply == crappy pay. I grew up in Hawaii and had to leave in order to make a living as a computer guy. I'd move back in a heartbeat if I could maintain a semblence of my current standard of living, but as long as computers are my profession, it ain't going to happen.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You're somewhat misinformed then. Some of the first computer generated images were produced in the early 50s on vectorscopes, and were used in the first CAD at that time. By the 60s, CGI was used for movie intros (Vertigo, 1961.) The first computer art competiton was in 1963, as was the first computer generated film. For more info, see the historical timeline of computer graphics and animation.