Price$34.95
Media TypeDVD, Gimmick(s)
CategoryClose Up
Date AddedMay 28, 2014
X Change
Julio Montoro
SM Productionz
(Based on 2 reviews)
If you have the ability to turn 'permanent inked drawings' to real life object, what will you do?
Julio Montoro from Spain, has come up with an amazingly commercial way to materialize or visually change sharpie drawings on a spectator's single, signed, card; the magic happens right underneath their signature!
After the magic moment, you can immediately hand out the card without any switches or clean ups. You end completely clean and your spectator can keep their signed card as an unforgettable memento. The effect is fully customizable to wherever your creativity takes you.
Draw a circle and it turns into a coin to lead into your coin effect. Draw a kiss chocolate and give the audience a 'kiss'. Doodle some random numbers and turn it into your phone number. Clean and slick.
With blessings from Vanishing Inc. and Alexis De La Fuente, we are proud to bring you one more addition to this amazing plot.
Contents:
Special Gimmick
Necessary Material Included
Reviews
(Top ▲)
Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: Stargazer by Rainbow
X-Change by SansMinds Review:
One gimmick, one DVD and $35 bucks. Is it gem or is it rubble? Stay tuned to find out.
Effect
Draw a coin on a playing card. The drawing vanishes at the same instant that a real coin appears. The card can immediately be handed out.
Method
The method is a classic principle in magic that has stood the test of time. It's a very simple and clever method that I would say is for intermediate or "higher" level magicians. The method as applied to other effects is fine for beginners, but as it's applied here, it would be much better if you have some experience.
Keep in mind that your gimmick can only be used to produce one item. In other words, you can make a "coin producing" gimmick and produce coins all day. But if you want to produce a key, you'll need to have made a "key producing" gimmick and have it hooked up. However, you can really only have one thing hooked up at a time. So basically, you need to pick what you're going to produce and stick with it.
To me, that's not a huge problem. A handkerchief vanisher only really vanishes a handkerchief. If you wanted to vanish a cigarette with it, you'd have to have a cigarette vanisher hooked up. The idea of the DVD was to teach you how to create the gimmick and then customize it to whatever routine you want. It wasn't the intent of the DVD to have you go from table to table producing a different thing at each table.
Ad Copy Integrity
The written ad copy is spot on. The ad trailer is mostly "there." However, there is one issue I had. Near the beginning (5 seconds in), there's a shot of the performer openly drawing directly on the signed card. You CANNOT do that. If you draw directly on the card like that, the effect does not work. However, everything else in the trailer is legitimate. But to me, that is dishonest.
Product Quality
The DVD is well done, well lit, well produced, etc. It covers the needed training in great depth. However, it does have Chris - I don't know his last name - who comes across so annoyingly that the DVD is very hard to watch at times. Also, the supplied stuff for making the super simple gimmick is not the best quality. You can buy a much better quality version at a fabric/craft store for a buck or two.
Final Thoughts
The concept is awesome and has a lot of potential. If it weren't for the big issue in the ad trailer and the less than quality gimmick, this would be 4.5 ish stars. As it is, however . . .
Final Verdict:
3 Stars with a Stone Status of gem.
(Top ▲)
This is another strike-out for SansMinds.
Once again I will get the two redeeming qualities out of the way.
The production quality is great as it usually is with SansMinds: The video and audio were clear, clean and crisp and as for the set-up and method, things were clearly explained. Two stars for this.
The premise of the effect here is fantastic, but because of the restrictions (which I will discuss in a moment) often it does not look horribly clean. The method is nothing new, but there are some decent ideas presented.
Now for the downsides.
$34.95 for this? Really? Production values aside, for what you are getting this is WAY overpriced. The ad copy is pretty spot on except that little claim of being "clean and slick." Anything but...Also there is a moment of someone drawing directly on the signed card, which absolutely cannot be done.
The host of this video is a guy named Chris and he is one of the most annoying people I have ever had to listen to - his exuberance (enthusiasm?) was way over the top to the point where it came across as very bad overacting. It was truly very hard to watch this video because of that. To be quite honest, I would rather watch Jay Sankey doing his goofiest other-worldly antics and bits as a squeaky, prepubescent teenager. I have nothing against Chris as a person - I have never met him. It is just his on-camera personality that I cannot stand.
The material you get to make this gimmick is not the ideal material. Yes, it 'might' do the job satisfactorily, BUT the finish of this material is not ideal, nor is the included material the best quality. I bring this up because there are possibilities of flashing when executing this gimmick if the light hits it at all as this is not a totally angle-proof effect. There is a huge gap of space where this could happen. No, this material is not I.T. but it is a commercially available craft store item.
There is one point where the host says that because of the nature of the gimmick material, you can move your arm quite freely. Not quite 100% true - if the gimmick is the length it needs to be to be effective, it will be quite short and thus, decidedly restrictive but yes, you can move your arm around a bit. The other issue is the possible reflection of light that I mentioned previously.
In order to reveal your "drawing" to the audience, you have to go through a bit of an awkward and convoluted process to place the gimmick, grip and then turn the whole card/gimmick unit together to display it. This is where one of the biggest problems that I have with this comes in: Because the gimmick "stuff" has to be a certain length to be effective, you have to hold the card quite close to your body to display the drawing AND to do the change. If you do not get it just right, holding the card and gimmick in one hand while you hold out the object to produce in the other hand can be hard to do, if not outright awkward. This could potentially give away part of the method.
The alternative set-up uses a button-up shirt which is just terrible - in order to hide the supplied "stuff" you have to hold the card impossibly closer to your chest to avoid the flimsier material of the shirt giving it away.
One little nitpick I have to point out: The supplied "stuff" is attached to the gimmick with a few pieces of tape. At one point during the teaching of how to attach the supplied "stuff" to the gimmick piece, he said that if you get the length a bit too long, you can take it off the gimmick, trim it down and reattach it to the gimmick. WHY would you not just trim it off of the safety pin at the other end and tie it back on?
Now there are some things that would look absolutely cool as it is plucked off the card and into reality. They also show you how to draw a playing card prediction on a card (which turns out to be wrong) and visually change it to the correct card (Think a small version of PrediChange by Yonel Arcade).
Another issue to consider if you are thinking of getting this DVD: For each object you want to pluck from the card, you have to create a unique gimmick for that object. For example: If you want to be able to pluck different things off the card for different performances, such as a coin, a Hersey Kiss and a key, you have to create three different gimmicks - one for each object. If you want to do the changing ink presentation, you have to create one for that.
Even if you do go through the trouble of making the gimmick, you will eventually have to remake them because they will get flimsy and wear down after a while - no big deal if you like performing this.
The alternative idea they gave for having the object fall off the card and into the waiting hand of a spectator is actually much better, visually, than the standard handling. You still have the other issues mentioned above to deal with.
In the Final Thoughts section, the hosts closes with the comment that "If you do this effect for your audience, they will remember you for all time, but most importantly, they will remember your magic." I cannot speak for every other magician out there but personally I would want them to remember ME rather than the magic.
There are much better and cleaner methods for doing effects in this plot that are actually worth your money. A very dim two and a half stars for fantastic production quality and a great idea.
Once again I will get the two redeeming qualities out of the way.
The production quality is great as it usually is with SansMinds: The video and audio were clear, clean and crisp and as for the set-up and method, things were clearly explained. Two stars for this.
The premise of the effect here is fantastic, but because of the restrictions (which I will discuss in a moment) often it does not look horribly clean. The method is nothing new, but there are some decent ideas presented.
Now for the downsides.
$34.95 for this? Really? Production values aside, for what you are getting this is WAY overpriced. The ad copy is pretty spot on except that little claim of being "clean and slick." Anything but...Also there is a moment of someone drawing directly on the signed card, which absolutely cannot be done.
The host of this video is a guy named Chris and he is one of the most annoying people I have ever had to listen to - his exuberance (enthusiasm?) was way over the top to the point where it came across as very bad overacting. It was truly very hard to watch this video because of that. To be quite honest, I would rather watch Jay Sankey doing his goofiest other-worldly antics and bits as a squeaky, prepubescent teenager. I have nothing against Chris as a person - I have never met him. It is just his on-camera personality that I cannot stand.
The material you get to make this gimmick is not the ideal material. Yes, it 'might' do the job satisfactorily, BUT the finish of this material is not ideal, nor is the included material the best quality. I bring this up because there are possibilities of flashing when executing this gimmick if the light hits it at all as this is not a totally angle-proof effect. There is a huge gap of space where this could happen. No, this material is not I.T. but it is a commercially available craft store item.
There is one point where the host says that because of the nature of the gimmick material, you can move your arm quite freely. Not quite 100% true - if the gimmick is the length it needs to be to be effective, it will be quite short and thus, decidedly restrictive but yes, you can move your arm around a bit. The other issue is the possible reflection of light that I mentioned previously.
In order to reveal your "drawing" to the audience, you have to go through a bit of an awkward and convoluted process to place the gimmick, grip and then turn the whole card/gimmick unit together to display it. This is where one of the biggest problems that I have with this comes in: Because the gimmick "stuff" has to be a certain length to be effective, you have to hold the card quite close to your body to display the drawing AND to do the change. If you do not get it just right, holding the card and gimmick in one hand while you hold out the object to produce in the other hand can be hard to do, if not outright awkward. This could potentially give away part of the method.
The alternative set-up uses a button-up shirt which is just terrible - in order to hide the supplied "stuff" you have to hold the card impossibly closer to your chest to avoid the flimsier material of the shirt giving it away.
One little nitpick I have to point out: The supplied "stuff" is attached to the gimmick with a few pieces of tape. At one point during the teaching of how to attach the supplied "stuff" to the gimmick piece, he said that if you get the length a bit too long, you can take it off the gimmick, trim it down and reattach it to the gimmick. WHY would you not just trim it off of the safety pin at the other end and tie it back on?
Now there are some things that would look absolutely cool as it is plucked off the card and into reality. They also show you how to draw a playing card prediction on a card (which turns out to be wrong) and visually change it to the correct card (Think a small version of PrediChange by Yonel Arcade).
Another issue to consider if you are thinking of getting this DVD: For each object you want to pluck from the card, you have to create a unique gimmick for that object. For example: If you want to be able to pluck different things off the card for different performances, such as a coin, a Hersey Kiss and a key, you have to create three different gimmicks - one for each object. If you want to do the changing ink presentation, you have to create one for that.
Even if you do go through the trouble of making the gimmick, you will eventually have to remake them because they will get flimsy and wear down after a while - no big deal if you like performing this.
The alternative idea they gave for having the object fall off the card and into the waiting hand of a spectator is actually much better, visually, than the standard handling. You still have the other issues mentioned above to deal with.
In the Final Thoughts section, the hosts closes with the comment that "If you do this effect for your audience, they will remember you for all time, but most importantly, they will remember your magic." I cannot speak for every other magician out there but personally I would want them to remember ME rather than the magic.
There are much better and cleaner methods for doing effects in this plot that are actually worth your money. A very dim two and a half stars for fantastic production quality and a great idea.