2024 PDGA Ace Club Disc

Welcome back! After getting down to the wire; next up on the docket was to figure out how the dragonfly scout drone would look in its environment. These are the reasons I like doing these development blogs. Because a smaller percentage of disc golfers receive the membership and Birdie Club discs; most would not notice the change from dragonfly to hummingbird for the Birdie Club design. It was at this point that John and I decided to split the Birdie Club and Ace Club designs down the middle for the sake of time. I’ll show some of the Birdie Club development below but this blog is ultimately about the Ace Club and further developing that character for her design.

2024 Ace Club
I initially started Ace Club without knowing if the character with the dragonfly drone was male or female. So, I created male-oriented Ace Club thumbnails. When I found out she was female, I made some adjustments. From the beginning, I aimed for a power pose to show strength. I intended to have the character destroying the disc golf course with her immaculate and merciful aim, leaving behind post-battle smoke and debris. From the beginning of switching from front, back, and side I had her holding a stack of discs. It reminded me of going out to a hole wanting to throw one in. You would grab a stack of your favorite discs and proceed to launch countless times to try and see it go in off the tee. The pose took some work but that lower upward angle stuck. Vic and John gave me great feedback to add the dragonfly toward the end of the rough stage like a support drone. While the concepts for Birdie and Ace moved away from the original idea slightly, I tried to keep the TRON-like appeal and the environment intact.

You can still get these Ace Club discs from the Professional Disc Golf Association if you’re interested in registering. Joining the Ace Club is a simple option you receive after picking your Amateur or Professional status. I want to thank Vic Allen and the PDGA for allowing me to collaborate with John Dorn once again. John is a legend in the disc golf stamp design game, and some of his inspirational stamps for Worlds and events around the world made me believe that this could be a viable career one day. What were some of your favorite things from the 2024 PDGA Renewal disc drop?

2024 PDGA Membership Disc

After John Dorn and I’s seemingly successful 2023 Membership campaign for the PDGA; Vic Allen (PDGA Membership Manager) reached out last year to see if John and I would be interested in doing the memberships this coming up year. What’s exciting is that they would be landing a new Eclipse R2 Plastic mold from Axiom Discs, the Insanity. The goal this year was to provide 3 triple foil stamps commemorating the Membership, Birdie Club, and Ace Club with a 4th design that would intend to be the Eagle Club disc update.

I loved what John and I did for our first collaboration in 2023. Having the opportunity to think about that drop and what we could do next to improve upon it was a consistent theme. With the larger Eclipse rim on a black R2 distance driver; we both were feeling that a cyberpunk/ futuristic-TRON subject matter could work. We would intentionally show the entire team on the Membership disc but feature the different characters on the Birdie and Ace Club to help round out the connection between all of them.

2024 PDGA Membership
With the approval of the concept greenlit, John and I got started on reference sharing. Because of how intense MVP Disc Sports’ Eclipse plastic compares to the rest of the industry; we wanted to lead with that. TRON Uprising, vintage TRON, and some weird Jodorowskys’ Dune samples made it into the mix. While John was settling into more of the classic TRON arena sphere, my concepts more or less went to this more open-air space obstacle. Grinding out how we’d include all of these characters took quite a bit of work. From the final thumbnail concept, you can see we mixed a bit of classic into the sort of upper thirds concept my original blue/yellow sketch provided. This year was also the introduction to the PDGA’s new branding. So we were able to get early access to the logos so they could make their way onto the new membership stamps.

Rough Phase
The basis of this layout goes back to the first sketch I did in the thumbnail stage. We all like that each character would have a unique silhouette, and be back facing to save us time and allow the other discs to feature the character in their environment. Going from rough shapes to the final characters took more time than we expected. How would the heavy, large-winged brute character on the left come to fruition? We wanted each character to have their uniqueness and specialty. We realized we wouldn’t have room for both male and female protagonists so we reduced the middle figure and made sure it was represented elsewhere. I took one more shot at the composition after we felt like the classic felt too close to TRON. I had John take over the rough stage and push this stamp to completion.

Final Stage
Since there wasn’t any great way of showing the idea of a smaller fairy-like female scout on the right side of the stamp, John had a great solution of taking her off the shoulder and designating a female reconnaissance bot for Ace Club. The dragonfly drone would represent the Birdie Club, and the heavy on the left side rounds out the supporting cast as the Eagle Club. It freed up a lot of foreground issues we were having. In the end, I felt John and I did a good job of creating a sci-fi subject with our twist.

2023 PDGA Membership Discs

In mid-summer of 2022, Vic Allen reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested in taking on the 2023 stamp. On the table were the Membership, Birdie Club, and Ace Club discs. These discs were slated to be stamped on black R2 (MVP’s recycled line) Craves. So with that in mind, you’ve got your black line layer on the flight plate which allows you 3 colors to accent that. It’s a different way of thinking with stamp design but a fun one.

I’d noodle in my sketchbook for about a week or so when Vic came back with an idea to possibly do a collaboration with John Dorn. John has been doing disc golf/ frisbee stamp design for decades. He had recently created the 2021 Relay Turtle stamp that went over really well. I jumped at the opportunity, hit up John Dorn on a phone call to work out the pipeline, and we got to work.

2023 PDGA Membership Disc: Koi Dragon

The Koi Dragon stamp started off as 3 fish swimming aimlessly in a fish bowl. After passing off this thumbnail to John, he added in the dragon and explained the story of how a Koi fish turns into a dragon. I thought this was awesome and definitely gave a jolt to this concept. John passed the concept back and it was my turn to dilute some of the noise and chaos happening and to bring this illustration home into 3 foil form. It took a bit to do that. The dragon was giving me fits. I probably redrew the dragon 2 or 3 times until I was happy with it.

The last edit going into the final phase was adding the important disc golf element. To do that, we came up with the solution to use a basket silhouette within the koi and include chains within the watery mix. I think this design turned out great!

2023 PDGA Birdie Club:

John started off with a super strong line drawing thumbnail for Birdie Club. When we passed off our designs, my first objective was to get this on a black background and start figuring out how this was going to work with foiling. I used gradients to John’s strength. He has a printing background and uses a halftone pattern fill for heavier parts of a design. I thought this could be a great way to blend the stamp into the dark flight plate. I thought that while the visual landscape was interesting; we needed characters navigating the course. That excitement of playing a disc golf course you’ve never played before. This felt very much like a dreamscape to me.

2023 PDGA Ace Club:

This Ace Club design started with a pretty strong photo from the known photographer, Beth Moon. The reference pulls from a dragon’s blood tree from Socotra Island. I love the umbrella-like silhouette and rigid shape of the canopy. It’s from there that I ventured away from the reference and put a more massive trunk like a very old oak tree. A combination of two ideas. John took then took my thumbnail idea and placed the basket and swirling root/ whimsical touch in the foreground section. We moved away from the gigantic mushroom because we didn’t want to show any psilocybin/ drug references as a PDGA offering. The absolute biggest hurdle with this stamp was the clipping area around the tree. Using the black R2 core to help with coverages and getting the correct foil gradients to do that work for us.

I just want to finish this by thanking Vic Allen for giving us the opportunity. It was a rewarding experience working alongside a disc golf design legend, a specific dark core color, and having to think about foil properties early on in the development stages. It helped us solve a lot of those issues before the Rough/ final phase of the artwork was to be addressed. A few stamp tests had to be sent to the PDGA before the final foils were chosen. I want to personally thank Ian Palmer for handling those logistics and collaborating to make sure we have the best foil represented on these. If you have any questions, feel free to ask below! You can actually purchase a Membership disc with your PDGA Membership renewal for $20!

Firm Electron Envy - Special Edition

James Conrad. What a performance!! If you’ve been living under a disc golf rock, here’s the final round of the 2021 PDGA Disc Golf World Championships. That shot propelled MVP and Axiom Discs to run its first custom colorway since the early Axiom Artist Series releases. It’s been a little over a year since that day but I’ve finally told myself I should probably post this before the 2022 World Championships. We wanted to truly honor the win while also acknowledging the sheer interest in the Electron Firm Envy that he threw in from 257 ft to force the playoff with 5x World Champion, Paul McBeth.

This is up there with some of the most prolific design jobs I’ve ever done in the disc golf space. I knew going in that getting and sorting through all the media from that weekend was going to be the task at hand. We had boots on the ground with Team MVP Team Manager and Marketing Director, Andrew Johnson following James and getting some insane footage. We also had PDGA and Gatekeeper Media content at our disposal. It was important for us at MVP to celebrate “The Shot” but to also put the viewer in the exact moment James raised the trophy. He’ll remember that particular moment for the rest of his life. I think the decision to create a replica yellow core, blue rim Electron Firm Envy was decided on just a few days after everything went down. MVP HQ wanted to make sure that was something they could facilitate both with plastic availability and machine time.

I had already made a mental note that most likely that was probably going to happen and started tinkering on editing the stock stamp created by Zachary Kelbaugh with some tasteful and clean Worlds win text. I wanted the stock Axiom Electron putter stamp to remain as much as possible while facilitating the celebration. While in the quick and dirty thumbnail phase, my gut said something had to go. The tightly wound audio waveforms representing the plastic firmness around the outside were extracted. I began working on a few inking pieces based closely on references of James that I paused from video footage. I’ve watched the shot 100+ times and probably in slow more for a majority of those trying to find particular moments. I remember the amount of pollen floating in the air, the time of day, and the sheer amount of sunlight beaming down on Hole 18 during the final approach. The grandstand, the crowd, the line, and the commitment around that right side tree. All of it. I put as much as possible while keeping it mostly uncluttered.

If you notice from the images I’ve shared below, we almost used the front-facing James shot from the award ceremony. I felt the rawness, the immediacy of the trophy raise near the water carried the energy from that thrilling playoff hole and favored that idea. With that finally decided, I went back and tightened up the Hole 18 grandstand, backhand throw, sunrays, and pollen around the Axiom and Electron Firm logos. This was a fast-paced project but I felt the ability to rush something out in a day or two just wasn’t the greatest idea. We wanted a classic design centered around James’ first PDGA Worlds win and something that acknowledged and represented the absolute insanity of the final round.

The Special Edition Firm Envy is out in the wild. Please be sure to ask your local retailer if they have any left in stock!