A new effect and old questions.

Dec 5, 2016
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52
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Tennessee
tjfritts.com
I, like many, have developed an effect. Like many I think my effect is really unique, really different, and in the right hands it could be absolutely stunning.

If it doesn't absolutely stink. It's a parental thing and this is my baby. One of many, actually, but this is the baby I think stands half a chance of growing up to be something worthwhile.

I'm no rookie to magic. I'm no rookie to performance. I'm no rookie even to creating my own effects. Half of my performances include tricks that I created because (due to a few hand deformities) many of the tricks out there just don't work smoothly enough in my hands. I am incredibly new to the concepts of... exposing my own effects.

This effect is, as far as I can tell, unlike anything else on the market. Obviously, I don't know every effect out there but I can say that I haven't found any like it anywhere I've looked for it.

Where do I go from here?
 
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Oct 12, 2016
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Perhaps you could explain what the effect accomplishes? If the folks here understand what it does, they'll be better able to tell you if something similar has already been done, and give their opinion on if it sounds like something that people would buy. And if the effect is unique, then you should be able to describe it without exposing the secret, right?
 
Dec 5, 2016
59
52
38
Tennessee
tjfritts.com
Okay. You're doing coin tricks, and you put a mark (X, a star sticker, anything the magician has handy, perhaps a little dragon spittle) on the quarter before doing your "big trick" because it's important to identify the coin to prevent any sort of second coin to make the big trick work. You toss the quarter from one hand into the other but you fail to catch it. It's simply gone. Threw it, didn't catch it, and it's nowhere to be found. Not in your hands, not under your deck of cards, gone to Botch City. After an awkward pause, you reach to a boxed deck on the table. "Since I botched that, we'll move on." Take the cards out of the box and split the deck to shuffle before you do a few card effects.

A coin falls out onto the table, and it's the marked quarter.
 
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WitchDocIsIn

Elite Member
Sep 13, 2008
5,877
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Sorry man, I'm pretty sure this is already on the market in a few different forms. I think there might even be something like this in Erdnase.

From a personal advice standpoint, whenever I create something I always assume I am re-inventing something that's already on the market. This saves me getting my hopes up (And I have re-created many existing things in my time).
 

WitchDocIsIn

Elite Member
Sep 13, 2008
5,877
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They do say that, but I disagree. It's just getting harder and harder to find them. I have managed to come up with some new applications to existing ideas, at least.

There's some guys on here that are very knowledgeable, and I know I like to go to people like RealityOne with any idea I think is "new" so they can point out how many times it's been published in the last hundred years. This is a valuable step. It's also valuable to know that creativity is a skill that can be developed. Don't let finding out that something is already published make you stop creating. Don't even let it put a stutter in your step. You created that - it's your work. That's awesome. Keep at it and you'll start doing things that no one has.
 
It's been said that there are no new ideas. :(
Creating magic is a skill just like any other talent in magic. Some people are just naturally born with the gift of creativity (Blake Vogt) and others have to practice constantly at it until they learn all the nooks and crannies of making something that's marketable. Also, sometimes creativity can't be forced. It can sometimes occur entirely by accident or out of necessity.

An example would be when I was first starting out in magic. My second performance ever in front of an audience of random people was at a local food pantry a mentor friend of mine would take me to. I was going to use a coin through hand effect that I learned from Howcast on YouTube as my opener to tell a story. Unfortunately I hadn't taken my angles into consideration and everyone saw the hidden coin tucked away in the pockets of my fingers. It was completely humiliating and I had to recover fast in order to save the rest of the show. I really liked the coin through hand plot though and was wondering if there was anyway I could do it with my hands being clean and the beginning and end of the effect and I also wanted it to land in the spectators hands so I could get them involved. I searched and didn't find anything that met my requirements so I began developing my own routine through trial and error. Eventually I came up with a method that I really liked and published my first effect, Doubting Thomas, on penguinmagic.com. Even to this day I still use the principle of the routine in my stage and parlour routines and I'm even working on an update to the project in the form of a version 1.2 of it.

Another instance of creating magic was when I was alone in my apartment I would just randomly mess around with objects I found lying around. I drink a lot of water so I had a lot of water bottles to play around with. I thought it would be really cool if I could just crush one as flat as a pancake. I knew of Eric Ross's Crush but it was no longer on the market and I heard the gimmicked method was not always reliable and the ungimmicked method was not practical for real live performance situations. So through trial and error I came up with my second release which I published on the Marketplace here called No Pressure. Not too long after I published that effect, I was at a party in Detroit with no magic items on me whatsoever. I was put on the spot to prove that I was a magician so I just winged up a 100% impromptu handling of No Pressure. I was literally forced to expand upon a creation on the spot but in the end it worked out beautifully and I'm very proud of the entire No Pressure project.

Right now I'm still active in creating. I have two effects that I feel very good about but I'm being very careful about releasing them. I want to make sure they are not only practical to me but to other performance styles as well which makes for an interesting creative challenge. I also am doing a lot of research into the originality of the effects. One of my creations in particular I'm very proud of and will use to compete in talent competitions. It has all the check marks for me: 100% impromptu, uses borrowed objects, borrowed object is altered and can be kept by spectator as a souvenir, and is useful on stage as well as street magic.

My last piece of advice is don't be afraid to throw out some ideas or sit on them for sometime. Some of my old ideas are complete trash and I laugh at myself for ever thinking they were practical for real performances. Other ideas I'm just sitting on waiting for that right thing to click in my mind, that "Aha!" moment. Through researching other effects for originality and just messing up sometimes and not being afraid of failure, I'm sure you will land on something cool. I struggled for months on one of the effects I listed above on a particular move until I was running a practice trial on a magic club I belong to. They were doing something odd during the performance because they thought it was a method I was using and they were trying to throw me off and little did they know that they actually helped solve an issue by doing that. It was completely random but it made the whole thing come together.

Don't give up! Just try to create at least one-two new effects a week, even if it isn't original or usable. It will help train your brain to think more abstractly and to solve problems more critically. You will only get better with practice. Best of luck!
 
Dec 5, 2016
59
52
38
Tennessee
tjfritts.com
Tyler, I watched a couple of your videos today. If I ever get better than breaking even on bills, I'm definitely making some purchases. I have a "good idea" how one of them works, but I'd still like to have yours just...to see if I'm right, lol.

I'm keeping my eyes open, for sure. Thinking, studying, plotting, planning. Unfortunately, I find a lot of my little ideas end up looking like kindergarten when I look at some of the stuff folks are doing. It really is like being a barn painter carpooling with Michelangelo. Experience really does matter. I suppose when my head is loaded with the effects others have done it will open my mind to what's possible beyond what I'm doing.
 
Tyler, I watched a couple of your videos today. If I ever get better than breaking even on bills, I'm definitely making some purchases. I have a "good idea" how one of them works, but I'd still like to have yours just...to see if I'm right, lol.
Wow! Thank you so much for your kind words. If you have any questions feel free to PM me. The Doubting Thomas effect people see the coin through hand and assume they know how it's done but in actuality it's a gimmick that becomes a utility move. That was my bad on the marketing of the effect and a lesson I learned in advertising; make your product concise and understandable.

Sometimes there is a beauty in something being so simple. So even in your opinion that one of your ideas looks "like kindergarten" someone else might really dig the idea and take it and run miles with it. Kenton Knepper had that effect on me. He taught something that was so simple that everyone just kind of passed on it and I don't even think he thought it was all that great. Well I took the principle and played around with it a bit and have been getting some great reactions once I made it my own thing. Even Daniel Madison didn't think of much of Angle Z when he first published it in his book Two. Then other magicians got a hold of it and ran wild with it and it became a huge hit amongst big time performers including David Blaine, Steve Brundage, and many others. But to him at first it was just a simple concept that he wrote maybe a paragraph about. Just something to think about. ;)
 

RealityOne

Elite Member
Nov 1, 2009
3,744
4,076
New Jersey
@Maverick85, the plot is similar to a some plots I've seen before using a variety of methods. Here is a list of similar effects:

http://www.conjuringarchive.com/show.php?cat=1352

That doesn't necessarily mean that what you have isn't original as to method. I can look at what you have is you shoot me a performance video and a PM with the method and see if I can find anything similar. However, I won't be able to do that until after Christmas (unfortunately, too much going on the next couple of weeks to spend a bunch of hours reading magic books).
 
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Dec 5, 2016
59
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Tennessee
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I don't have a performance video and have never tried to make one, so I'll try to get my stuff organized around all the other stuff that's going on here. I appreciate your interest.
 

obrienmagic

Elite Member
Nov 4, 2014
1,469
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Your originality could be in the method itself? Who knows, maybe you have the cleanest method for achieving an effect that has never been done before! I agree that a video or something would be great for clarity. Perhaps submit it privately to some publishing companies (they are sworn not to use it or its contents without permission.) They will be able to tell you if it is marketable or not and if it is original or not.
 
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