Comrade Punynari decided to hold a contest for artists to design a new mascot for his site, Moe Passion. He used a moe character generator (more info on his site), to design the mascot, but wanted something with a little more artistic liberty to fit with his site’s main theme – being a blog of a US sailor and otaku. His design was quite interesting, and very impressionable to me, so I gladly took on the challenge. That and he also wanted to draw on a Navy motif gave me just the inspiration I needed in order to make his mascot Sakura more unique. Drawing this style was definitely out of my comfort zone, as I don’t do a lot of moe feeling characters. That and I’ve still yet to grasp the subtle nuances of the loli-moe proportions.