Sakura Con Guest: Range Murata

Range Murata ©2008 George SeguinRange Murata ©2008 George SeguinPhoto by George Seguin[/caption]Japanese artist and designer Range Murata will be a guest at Seattle’s Sakura-Con April 18-20, 2014.

Murata is best known for his beautiful conceptual and/or character design work on such anime series as Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6, Shangri-La and SoltyRei.

Winner of the “Best Artist of the Year” at the 2006 Seuin Awards, he has published numerous doujinshi and artbooks including Racten, robot and futurhythm.

Murata has also been involved in console games. His work has appeared in Sega Saturn’s Wachenröder and Playstation 2’s Spy Fiction for Sammy Studios.

Previously announced guests at Sakura-Con include Shigehiko Sato at Fuji Creative Corp, Mami Koyama (Sailor Moon & Urusei Yatsura), Yui Ishikawa (Mikasa Ackerman from Attack on Titan), Christopher Smith (Digimon Fusion and Crossfire: B-Daman), Matthew Mercer (Tygra from Thundercats reboot) and performance artist ELISA (Hayate the Combat Butler and Project Railgun S).

To buy your tickets to Sakura-Con, visit their official website.

Hiroshi Nagahama Announced For Sakura-Con 2014!

By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek)

SakuraThe Pacific Northwest’s largest anime convention, Sakura-Con, will have as their guest, director and designer Hiroshi Nagahama.

Nagahama is making a return to Sakura-Con’s beautiful host city of Seattle. Nagahama was a guest for three years in a row from 2002 – 2004 and he was more recently seen at Sakura-Con 2008.

NagahamaNagahama’s design work spans such titles as the TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997), Samurai Deeper Kyo (2002) and on Ryousuke Takahashi’s 1993 OVA series The Cockpit.

Nagahama’s directing credits include chief director on the TV series Jubei-Chan: The Counterattack of Siberia Yagyu (2004), director of Mushi-Shi (2005), Flowers of Evil (2013) and the Kiss rock band inspired OVA series Detroit Metal City (2008).

For tickets or information, you can visit the official Sakura-Con 2014 website here.