nice work, love the background- after I saw the step by step it made me wish you hadn't stretched the bird quite so much

Not bad, but flip the flag part...

Thanks for the comments. I did try to flip the flag, but it just looked off somehow. I tried a few different "stretches" of the bird. The less elongated ones didn't really give a Phoenix feel...just a big bird on a building. I'll keep at it though.

This is a wicked cool but you warped the original source I can barely tell how you used it. But this is still wicked cool nonetheless

Thanks jawshoewhah. Actually, the source image is the only part I didn't warp. I even masked out the bird face in the final step so that you could see the source. It's been changed into a "firey brightness" (hopefully), but in the Hi-Res you should be able to clearly see the source image. But I agree. It's wicked cool. Didn't think I was going to be able to get it to turn out the way I envisioned, but it did.

creative use of source. fantastic outcome

Thanks you scratzilla1 for the wonderful comment.