Continuing from last years United States Disc Golf Championship (USDGC) run, I was offered the chance to design a stamp to help fund-raise for the 2017 USDGC in Rock Hill, SC. The event is one of disc golf's best displays of competitive play in the world. The first objective in mind from Adrian Southern of Disc Golf United/ Innova East was to create a design for the Thrower Roc release. The goal was to create a flying Roc bird in a yin yang shape. Both flying dynamically and in harmony with each other. As you see from the thumbnails, I couldn't quite get something that felt right. Most ideas were either too cropped or too busy.  After the thumbnails were drawn and ideas started manifesting, these ideas expanded into a USDGC collector Roc piece. 

Ideas come from everywhere. At this point, I've already spent some hours combing over what I could do with a yin yang shape and wasn't too fond of the results. I stumbled across a vulture tattoo design from Mike Moses of Spiritus Tattoo in Columbus, Ohio. This piece really got me fired up. The stance, proportions and overall shape really filled in the pieces perfectly.  It was my job to use that inspiration and get this stamp back on track. As you can see from the start and then more toward the end, I experimented with that outward protruding chest, neck rotation and feathers. I wanted movement on each side of the design. So I directed the movement with the S shape of the yin yang. Adrian and I both talked about doing a showcase hole design last year during this time. This was the opportunity to do that. So the left side displays the monstrous Hole 5. This hole sits at 1083ft and is a par 5. 

I want to thank Adrian and crew for being patient while this idea sort of manifested itself along the way. The end result was able to capture the USDGC hole tradition with a twist. What do you all think? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.