Hi, I've been doing magic for 7 years and only doing Card Magic for 1 year. I really like strong and extremely visual technical movements. I would like you to advise me on what direction to take to do magic as powerful as Patrick Kun or Shin Lim without gimmicks only pure technique but I have not found a good guide or advice if it is viable to do in public since I am not so interested in magic for social networks. Of course, you could recommend magicians and material for this type of card magic so specific, I would appreciate it.
Advice on visual card magic
- Thread starter randy_fdez
- Start date
Well they aren't afraid of gimmicks and you shouldn't be either! Shin Lim has a DVD called Shinanigans which should have some good stuff. I also enjoyed his At the Table Live lecture from Penguin Magic. That should be a good place to start. The lecture covers more gimmicked stuff, I don't have the DVD but I believe it has more ungimmicked effects.
in the dvd shinanigens practically everything is useless very nice for camera but for audience just to make a person a lot of critical angle problems
Some of the same goes for the stuff in the lecture. You should at least have a bit of distance. I think it could be considered parlor magic, not close-up. I'm not too familiar with Patrick Kun's stuff, but from what I have seen that may be the case there as well.
Have you checked out Dan and Dave's Trilogy? It's worth a look.
what do you mean by Visual? do you mean where the audience can "see" the magic happening in real-time, or do you mean "flashy" moves?
I mean visual magic in which the effect is a dry impact on the viewer such as color changes and that kind of thing
Magicians have been trying to make magic more and more visual for a long time now.
The sad truth is that right now, around 80% of the mind-bogglingly visual magic you see is gimmicks, very angle-sensitive, probably not suited for a real life performance with people all around. And I have a strong feeling that I've underquoted the number.
A lot of what Shin Lim does is really angle-sensitive and there's no way he would be able to pull off all of his AGT performances with an entire audience around him in a busker-style performance environment. He has different sort of effects for that situation. You'd also notice that the times he does NOT have control over the camera man's movements and areas focussed on(think the Ellen Show performances), he sticks to what are more classical magic effects (pick a card, think a number). It's a very smart tactic, because this way he has made a name for himself doing visual magic and yet gets away doing a basic ACAAN (of course I'm not undermining his technical expertise, which he has bucket-loads of).
There have been so many times where I am sitting at a table, across somebody, and secretly wishing that instead of dismissing lapping techniques (because I rarely sit at a table when I perform) I had mastered them. Catering to a particular situation is an important task. Though it may seem that learning a technique just for a very specific situation is too much work, remember, you never know.
In my opinion, if you want to build on something, you have to compromise something else. The more visual you make an effect, you probably have to compromise on it's angles (or its ease of performance).
Think like this: The Cardini Change is more visual than the Erdnase change (usually). Incidentally, the Cardini Change is also more angle-sensitive compared to the Erdnase Change.
You're right. Colour changes are your best bet. Check out the Erdnase Change tutorial on here available for free. It has great insights into how to make that simple change more visual. Check out the Rev, C3, Bertram and Cardini colour changes. Also look at the miscellaneous section in Expert Card Technique. The entire book, if read cover to cover, gives so much awesome magic based on pure technique, that I get severe mental indigestion if I read that book for a long time. It's too much. It's too good.
All the Best finding what you want.
The sad truth is that right now, around 80% of the mind-bogglingly visual magic you see is gimmicks, very angle-sensitive, probably not suited for a real life performance with people all around. And I have a strong feeling that I've underquoted the number.
A lot of what Shin Lim does is really angle-sensitive and there's no way he would be able to pull off all of his AGT performances with an entire audience around him in a busker-style performance environment. He has different sort of effects for that situation. You'd also notice that the times he does NOT have control over the camera man's movements and areas focussed on(think the Ellen Show performances), he sticks to what are more classical magic effects (pick a card, think a number). It's a very smart tactic, because this way he has made a name for himself doing visual magic and yet gets away doing a basic ACAAN (of course I'm not undermining his technical expertise, which he has bucket-loads of).
There have been so many times where I am sitting at a table, across somebody, and secretly wishing that instead of dismissing lapping techniques (because I rarely sit at a table when I perform) I had mastered them. Catering to a particular situation is an important task. Though it may seem that learning a technique just for a very specific situation is too much work, remember, you never know.
In my opinion, if you want to build on something, you have to compromise something else. The more visual you make an effect, you probably have to compromise on it's angles (or its ease of performance).
Think like this: The Cardini Change is more visual than the Erdnase change (usually). Incidentally, the Cardini Change is also more angle-sensitive compared to the Erdnase Change.
You're right. Colour changes are your best bet. Check out the Erdnase Change tutorial on here available for free. It has great insights into how to make that simple change more visual. Check out the Rev, C3, Bertram and Cardini colour changes. Also look at the miscellaneous section in Expert Card Technique. The entire book, if read cover to cover, gives so much awesome magic based on pure technique, that I get severe mental indigestion if I read that book for a long time. It's too much. It's too good.
All the Best finding what you want.
@randy_fdez, I would highly recommend the "Paint Brush Color Change." It is a move I have been doing for many years. It is startling, super visual and very magical. It can be done as just a lightning fast visual trick, or a way to change the wrong card into the right one, or other applications limited only by the imagination. It's pretty much angle-proof, and unlike many other color changes, e.g. the Erdnase Change, or ones where a card is palmed, this is open and fair, and it never looks like you are covering the deck or a card, or that you could be palming a card - because you're not. I have posted a link to a beautiful demonstration of it below (It is at 0:46 on the video). Although that precise move is not explained in the video, I am sure you will quickly figure out the handling by observing it closely. I have found it very helpful to build up pressure/compression with the thumb and index of my right hand, so that you are almost like springing or shooting the card you are "changing" face down onto the deck. The other key is to practice to make sure the all the cards are perfectly squared after the change so there is no tell-tale "evidence" of what happened.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...-8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=__GhKX9mCKcO8ggfs36eQAw22
https://www.google.com/search?clien...-8&oe=UTF-8#kpvalbx=__GhKX9mCKcO8ggfs36eQAw22
good point, I'm clear about that but I wanted clear effects that hit the viewer directly into the visual sense
Have you seen Bill Goodwin perform it? extremely fluid
You can learn it from his Reflection DVD - http://www.billgoodwinmagic.com/reflection.html
or just the change
https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/card-magic-downloads/the-paint-brush-change/
With highly "Visual Magic" a lot has Gimmicks of some kind or techniques that can make a performance 'stiffer'... like the Buck Twins
Have you seen Chris 'Orbit' Brown's 'Arthritis Onslaught' Videos? they are old videos, but has a lot of interesting changes
he has some instruction videos he released and has done some online lectures
also, there is a lot of "visual magic" but is it practical? can you perform it for more than one person? what are the angles? does it look suspicious? are the moves "stiff"? there are a lot of factors when going into actual performances, and people have different ideas on what is actually considered 'visual'
Have you seen Chris 'Orbit' Brown's 'Arthritis Onslaught' Videos? they are old videos, but has a lot of interesting changes
he has some instruction videos he released and has done some online lectures
also, there is a lot of "visual magic" but is it practical? can you perform it for more than one person? what are the angles? does it look suspicious? are the moves "stiff"? there are a lot of factors when going into actual performances, and people have different ideas on what is actually considered 'visual'
I have come to realize that really impressive, visual and practical magic is like searching for diamonds. Look what I have searched and there is no way that something is worth practicing other than to upload to Instagram.
"practical" can be different things to different people in different situations, that is why I always stay away from "what is the best effect" type questions, and I will always start asking questions back because one person's "best" can be something different to another person... and I want that person to answer it themselves, vs having someone tell them what the "best" is
there are compromises that we have to decide on what is more important for the overall result... using cards as an example, you can do something with a borrowed completely inspected deck of cards that can be inspected again right after, or you can do something with a heavily gimmicked deck, that may be more 'visual' or have more elements to it, but there are now more restrictions... and there are of course variations in between, like using moves to bring in and take out extra things using a borrowed deck, etc. a lot of moves-vs-self-working, advanced techniques-vs-easier techniques... everything is going to involve some kind of 'compromise' be it visual, or instruction-based, handling, etc
there are compromises that we have to decide on what is more important for the overall result... using cards as an example, you can do something with a borrowed completely inspected deck of cards that can be inspected again right after, or you can do something with a heavily gimmicked deck, that may be more 'visual' or have more elements to it, but there are now more restrictions... and there are of course variations in between, like using moves to bring in and take out extra things using a borrowed deck, etc. a lot of moves-vs-self-working, advanced techniques-vs-easier techniques... everything is going to involve some kind of 'compromise' be it visual, or instruction-based, handling, etc
Yes, and in multiple ways.
In my opinion is it not only like searching for diamonds, but also creating diamonds.