Yesterday I posted about making a corndog out of urethane. Later I made one out of foam, and prefer it to the urethane. I think the foam works better with the texture of a corndog.
I started playing around with the foam corndog and it handles better than the urethane one. Here’s what I came up with:
The video isn’t what I made it for, but it makes for a decent social media video.
This week I’m MCing a virtual event, well really just doing introductions for bands at an event. It’s three bands, and all I really need to do is read the words that the event producer gave me, however I want to add a little something. One of the things that I want to do is make a corndog appear and disappear. As far as I know, no one makes a vanishing corn dog.
I started out to fabricate a corn dog. The first step is to make a silicone mold of a corn dog. The first surprise was that a corndog floated in the silicone, so I had to hold it down with some toothpicks. Once the silicone mold had cured, I pulled out the real corndog and used urethane to make the fake corndog.
I added some pigment to the urethane, the color, isn’t exactly right, but I’m going to give it a little bit of paint and I’ll be good to go. I only need this for one show, so the paint doesn’t need to last.
I’m excited to do record this! We’ll see how it turns out!
I just had my first full in person show in over six months! I’ve done shorter shows, but this was the first full one. It’s the most nervous I’ve been in a long time, I knew it was nerves, and I didn’t let them get the best of me.
The shorter show’s I’ve been doing were designed specifically for a 20 min set and didn’t have any of my normal full show material in it. I did a couple of run through’s of the show, it was amazing how much of the show came back immediately.
I was also surprised at what I forgot to do once the show started. I do a nest of boxes, and what comes out of it is something from the beginning of the show. I forgot to do the bit that allows me to get the item. At the end of the show, when I started to do the boxes, I realized I didn’t have anything to come out of them. I took the did a quick card trick and the signed card came out of the nest of boxes.
It was fun to be in front of an audience again!
Physical movement virtuoso Christian Swenson joins Matt and Louie in the Moisture Festival Podcast Studio. They talk about his early life studying dance, his interest in movement and how that led him to create his unique style of performance called “Human Jazz.”
They cover the variety of performance masters Christian has studied under and how he came to perform at the Moisture Festival. If you love Christian’s work, you will love hearing how it all began.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Last summer I started using rechargeable batteries in my show. I fought using them for a long time because in the past they weren’t very good. I finally listened to Steve Trash and Eric Haines about getting them. While I’m not performing a lot this summer (due to COVID restrictions) they are still getting used.
I bought double the batteries to run my show. When I’m out performing, I have another set in the charger and switch the batteries when I get home. Initially it took a little while to get into the rhythm of using them, but now it’s second nature. I also keep a full set of regular batteries for my show in the trunk of my car as a back up.
The rechargeable batteries paid for themselves within a month or two last summer. Having them this summer is nice because not having a battery bill is adding to my profits, which is really helpful this year. If you’re not using rechargeable batteries, it’s totally worth investing in, I wish I did a few year earlier!
One of the silver linings about having the entertainment industry shut down during the COVID pandemic is that I’m getting play around with making a lot more props. One thing that I’ve wanted to make for a while are peas for the three shell game.
I had some time some the other day and made some molds for the peas. Then I picked up some urethane and made them. The urethane I used was a 40A on the Shore Hardness Scale.
They have a little bit of give, but are pretty firm. I like them so far!
Months ago I started working on my version of Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper trick. My version ended up taking out everything I didn’t like about the trick, which are the cards and the newspaper. I ended up replacing them with Polaroid pictures and an envelope. It’s still a work in progress.
A couple weeks ago I was invited to be a guest at a magic club meeting that took place over zoom. One thing they did was allow people to perform and get critique from Patrick Martin, who also did a presentation during the meeting.
Only a handful of people took the club up. I volunteered to do something if they had space and wouldn’t get in the way of club member’s having the chance to be critiqued. They had plenty of space, so I did my trick with Polaroid pictures.
There was some great feedback, mostly with how bad my pictures were and how they showed up on the screen. They are 100% correct, here’s a screenshot:
The reflection from my ring light made the picture hard to see. There are a couple of solutions for this:
I think the final solution will be a combination of all of the above.
Yesterday’s post was a bit harsh on Goswick. I’m going to give him some praise today. Here’s a trick I think is an interesting idea:
Now, it’s a interesting routine, I’m not sure it calls for the giant props that he’s using, but it’s a good idea. If there was a way to have a flat board, without the strange triangle, it’d be a much better trick. I think the triangle points at the method.
I do like the idea of watching the elbow, that’s good. I wonder if there’s a better prop for this trick. Maybe a cloth that’s held up, you’d need a little bit of engineering, but using a cloth or something not rigid would add another layer to this effect.
When I was a kid there used to be an ad in magic magazines for a catalog of illusion plans. They were by Goswick’s Illusions. I remember writing him to get the catalog and based on the one picture of the illusion and the catalog description it was amazing. Somehow 20+ years l stumbled upon his website and he’s still selling his illusion plans.
It was a very interesting watching his demo videos, he has a lot of creative ideas…unfortunately they are poorly executed ideas.
Here’s one of them:
I 100% give him credit for creating his own method and ideas. However magically most of them fall very short of being good ideas. It’s one thing to have an original effect or method, but you need to understand what makes a trick good. Not everything should be sold, have a free plans workbook that’s the bad ideas, or contribute them to a magazine…charging people for them is something that I personally don’t agree with.
One of my favorite creation is my take up reel. It’s something that I’ve wanted to use forever and went out and created a way to make it happen. Normally when I put out magic props, I put out what I use. When developing this, I got it to work great for me and thought I had a final product. I then sent it out to some people and they didn’t use it like I did. That led to me improving it and ended up with a better final product!
It’s always great when I get emails from people who have one:
“Louie’s Take-Up Pull is incredible. If you want to perform the Vanishing Birdcage in the “real world” you need one of these, but you can do much more with it. I have several Take-Up Pulls made by Hammerton and Martin but this high quality modern recreation is every bit as good and at a fraction of the price of any of the others. I highly recommend Louie Foxx’s Take-Up Pull!”
Marc DeSouza
Getting emails like this makes all the work in testing it worth it!
