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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?"
"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.
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.