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.

Simon Lizotte Music City Open Champion

Sunday, mid-afternoon the text came in to start thinking about a stamp. Simon Lizotte had a 2 stroke lead going into the final round. He played out of his mind and was making the proper plays down the fairway and hitting some incredible putts all weekend. We knew the Pixel would be the disc we would run. I took a quick hour that Sunday afternoon while action was kicking off to create a stand in stamp just in case. The initial idea was to keep with the theme of this year and the Les Paul. My initial blocking in was to feature the body of the guitar in simplified drafting shapes.

The decision to go with a “back to back” was universal within the MVP Disc Sports ranks. Sunday night I got on it and started gathering referencing of both front and back of the SG and Les Paul guitars. I used a mix of different library models from Google Sketchup to nail camera field of view. Mainly, it was an excellent resource to help me get both guitars on guitar stands and in proper perspective

The final stretch was adding in a sense of “flow state” which was mentioned quite a few times on the live event broadcast. Simon seemed to be in that headspace all weekend and I wanted to incorporate that element. I used radial symmetry and bolts to add the 2nd foil and consciously used the 3rd foil for the Event/ Logos/ and “Back-To-Back” banner up top. The final stamped product was dressed in dark purple metallic, gold holographic, and brushed silver foil. The custom triple foil stamp took a solid 2.5 days from start to completion.

The concept is pretty straight forward but overall, with the amount of pressure and time to get something to final, I’m pretty stoked on the outcome. Let me know what you think? How could I have done “back-to-back” differently? Thanks for stopping by.

2022 Gyropalooza Total Eclipse Proxy

The 2022 Gyopalooza brings something pretty exciting. We had a new Total Eclipse glow technology in the lab awaiting its release. The Proxy is outfitted with both an Eclipse™ Glow flight plate and Eclipse™ Glow Rim. Colors vary from white, aqua, green, blue, and purple with a multitude of different combinations.

The Idea: I had this image in my head but instead of being an intimidating alien species laser-stomping everything in sight, they were dispatched to broadcast exclusive MVP content and news to the Gyronaut masses! All of this sounded great but the important goal from the get-go was not to hinder the glow properties. I think it’s important to design stamps with disc plastic in mind. If the glow is an important draw, why would you cloud it up with foil? Lastly, by setting up a two-point perspective grid, it gave me a great base to lay down that looming presence of the tall beings. There are still a few MVP iconic themes scattered about.

I wanted some of the TVs to engage with the local disc golfers. It was a good placement for “2022”, discs, and a Brad/Chad silhouette we’ve come to know so well these past digital versions of Gyropalooza. Lastly, the last and most important icon located on the far right represents a huge love for all of our fans who’ve stuck by us from the very beginning through the years of rapid growth. I love to infuse emotive characteristics in robots. Allowing robots to have a bit more life and curiosity like our human race. Lastly, I wanted the center alien bot to have its glow casting on the disc golfers underneath. I used a line screen in the background to enhance that particular element. Doing that for every TV would’ve clouded up where I wanted the focus to go.

Hot Stamping Foils: I’m a sucker for white pigment foil because of how bright the Eclipse glow plastic is. It allows some of that color to seep through and gives the glowing state a bit more depth. The accent color is a classy nod of brushed gold that allows it to pop off of that core plastic color. Again, it’s important that the accented foils work alongside the others during the glowing state.

Can’t wait to get some of these in my hands. MVP took their industry-leading glow and just made it better. I don’t get out and play glow rounds very often but this disc makes it tempting. What are your thoughts? Excited to see these in the wild? You can get your 2022 Gyropalooza pack from any reputable MVP dealer. Included will be this Total Eclipse Proxy, a Prototype Eclipse Color Glow Envy, and Lab Second discs for a pretty good price. Thanks for tuning in!