Range Murata

Doujin Circle: PASTA'S ESTAB.

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Renji "Range" Murata is a Japanese artist and designer, known for his unique style combining Art Deco and Japanese Anime elements. He is best known for his conceptual design work on Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6.

He began his career in the early 1990s doing design work for video games, including having done the illustrations and character design for the fighting game series made by Atlus, Power Instinct (豪血寺一族, Goketsuji Ichizoku). Since 1996 he left the game company and went on to become a freelance illustrator.

He runs a doujin circle called PASTA'S ESTAB., which publishes collections of illustrations from his various works as well as some original goods. He has published more than a dozen books of his work, some of the most notable being Robot, Rule, and futurhythm. He was also voted "Best Artist of the Year" in the 2006 Seiun Award.

Since 2013 Murata has served as a faculty member at the Kyoto Seika University's Faculty of Manga(Character Design Course). Artist You Shiina is said to be among his students.

Range Murata selected an elite army of artists including Yoshitoshi ABe and Ugetsu Hakua to contribute to ROBOT Volume 1 and ongoing.

Notable works outside anime: