Café Rig Rina | Animation

Story

Our first "less" animation series is called The Rain Garden and is inspired by the music "H.T.M Garden of Rain" composed by Sho Sakai. He is also one of the founders of Café Rig Rina.

Man has perished from this world. A robot, insects and the plants are the only survivors.
The stroy starts from a cafe in a botanical garden abanded for a long time.
A robot that was actually the mascot of this garden awake from a deep sleep by the rain that stroked his mossed head.
The robot is isolated from the original system moving without any reason.
What will robot start finding and where is it going to?
"less - The Rain Garden" is an everyday fantasy of the robot presented by the form of animation.

Music

We will deliver the element that is difficult to convey through the visual image by the original musich of Sho Sakai.

He will expand the expression of time and rythm in the music.
Such as the emotional time which depends on our consiousness. It passes slowly when you feel calmness while watching the sky contraly feels faster when you are busy. He will express such a change in time sense and the instable rythm by his music.
He will pursue the composition of unstableness and the unbalance elements which affects to the balance of our biorhythm by releasing the stressed nerve from inside of your body.

The music that we use for the animation will be progressed in parallel to the animation production and are gradually developed by adding the revision step by step. The initial music was the whole inspration of the animation.

Robo

We do not know who made the robot.
A rboto waked up by the storke of a rain drop. The robot seems to be created based on the ancient lost technology. However its body is empty there are not mach information which we could perceive from the robot. A copper and screws and nat are used for its parts however, the surfaces are turned to stones.

The design theme of the robot is developed baed on Japanese myth and wabi-sabi aesthetic sense in which the moss of Sanzenin Temple and Rurikoin Temple in Kyoto is growing on its armor. The unique unbalanced sense of its design brings the beauty of inperfect-ness and its empty body is the representation of the got or some soul comes and lives into an empty space of Shinto religion. There is an extention armer on its left arm and it always carry the armer. This is because it can not reach any kind of things with its short arms in the daily life thus, it will make a boundry to its activities.

In addition, the flower growing on its head is its striking feature but the flower is cared by Robo itself and is equiped. We assume that Robo is changable because the kind of flower on his head depend on its mood.

Kerberos

Kerberos is a pet of Robo.
It seems like the skin is constituded by some kind of metal but we do not know wether if it is an animal, insect or a biologically created. There are small version of Kerberos inside its body like a matryoshka doll. Its main food is screws and nuts so it aims Robo's ear parts.

It always wears the yellow headphones. We are not sure if it is listening to a music or it is applying them as the earplug. It does not look like but is actually quite sensitive. Flowers are living on its body like Robo however, unlike Robo, it stops moving when the flowers died because of the sadness.

Doctor

A pig doctor.
He occasionally apears in the dream of Robo. It seems like he has been researching on plants for a long time however most of his works are covered by a black box. He loves to drink a black coffee and he has decided that he is going to eat the french toast with a cup of coffee on his final day.

Artists

TAKUYA SUZUKI

Author, Writer, Director

Graduated the University of Melbourne（Victorian College of the Arts) in 2013
with PhD (Film&TV)

Since 2004 to 2008 Takuya has contributed design and animations for a Japanese company Stargate Systems Co. located in Osaka, Japan. He has produced and created several websites for their clients, including Flash animation and sound design. Since 2009, he has been freelancing in the field of web design and music videos. Some of his work includes Japanese Rock Band OROCHI official web site (2010-2011) and their music video Phoenix (2010) and Castle in the Sky (2010) etc.

While he was studying animation at the Victorian College of the Arts in Australia, he has won the best postgraduate diploma animation award from Film Victoria and the best script award from Animal Logic for his short animated film Winter Peony (2007) and in the following year, his work shizuku (2008) was nominated for the Kodak’s best cinematography award. In the conclusion of his study in Australia, he has received PhD degree in Film and Television (Animation) from the University of Melbourne.

Takuya’s recent relevant experiences are independent animation production for collaborative art projects started after the earthquake March 11th 2011 in Japan and working with the creative and artistic questers such as Japanese calligrapher Shingo Nozao and contemporary artist Hiroko Saigusa. This has included performances involving projection mapping held at Saitama Hall (2018) in Japan and ARTIFACT Gallery in New York (2019).

He has been participated in all stages of animated film production, including script and production research, animation, photography and sound design. He has also collaborated with artists from the Victorian College of the Arts to create some experimental animations and some of these works have been shown at MIAF, ACMI, NGV, Federation Square, Victoria State Library and Tokyo University of Fine Arts.

www.takuyas.com (Concept Artist）/ www.takuya-suzuki.com（Videographer）
www.imaginary-time.com (Production Diary）

SHO SAKAI

Composer, Recording and Mix Engineer

Composer, Vocalist. Recording and Mastering Engineer. Sound Editor.
Visual Merchandiser. Tea advisor.

When he was 15 years old, he left his parent's home with a guitar becuase his father did not accept his future path to be a musican. As the result he became homeless.

He has experienced to play a music and sing a song on the street to gain a food for a day for a whole year. Then people started calling him God which was a shame for him.

After his hungry period, he was given some oppotunities to fill in the band which escaped just before the live as a singer, also working as the recording assistant, he could eventually escaped the homeless in one and an half years. He then became a pupil of a Japanese vocalist and learnt about songs, a bass guitar, piano performance and theory, acoustics and music therapy.

When he was 20 years old, he went back to his parent's home for the first time in 5 years due to his illness. He had to stop his music activity for a while to recover from his illness. While he was recovering, he had done some research on the effect and the possibility of sounds toward our body, time sense, emotion, environment and started pursuing a new musicography after his recovery.

He founded a rhythm adjustment methodology from the perspective of converting the dodecaphonism into a concept of time. He then established a musicography based on the theory of "homogenized time".

His passion towards music did not allow him to be just a composer but he is now pusuing the variety of matters across the field of music and sound scene today.

ex001 (work sample from ex series）

Our Goal

Our goal is to create a coworking space that is the mixture of a cafe and a botanical garden. The space is based on the world of our animation series so it intergrates some virtual elements. Creators can use the space for their own creative activities such as personal projects including small business, broadcasting, exhibition, installation and performance.

The feature of this cafe will be that we can have a high quality coffee from Melbourne, Australia and we can also use the fasility including a gallery space, laboratory and equipments such as video camera, render firm, 3D printer and high spec computers. In addition, there will also be a show in the whole cafe and garden space every once a week.

We are planning to cover some of the budget to set up the above cafe and garden space by the profit of our character goods from our animation series.