The Next Step is Magic

One of the challenges of the sponge tennis ball routine I’m working on is to make it more “magically sound”. I’ve gotten a lot things figured out. Yesterday I posted about the steal of the FS2 gimmick and the ditch of the final palmed sponge ball. Something I didn’t like was that a lot happens between the false transfer and the reveal that the sponge balls is gone.

The sequence is:
1: False transfer
2: Hand palming the ball takes the book that I’m holding under my arm, gestures and says a line.
3: Put the book away in my case and ditch the palmed ball.
4: Reveal the ball is gone

There’s a lot of motion, and I think it would be easy for someone to doubt they actually saw the tennis ball in my hand. I wanted to show it after the ditch and I remembered recently reading in a set of Tommy Wonder’s lecture notes about appearing to show the item after the ditch. I also remember seeing this in action the time I was lucky enough to see his act live.

Here’s Tommy Wonder’s act:

For the vanish of the lemon, he’s able to show its there after it’s been ditched. That’s the part that inspired my path to show the tennis ball after the ditch.

sponge tennis ball magic

This is a simple addition to the back of the FS2 gimmick. Now the tennis ball can be seen after it’s been ditched in my case. It’s been a long road to get to to this point with my sponge tennis ball routine. I’ve always said that creating magic is solving a series of problems and this sponge tennis ball routine is a good example of that!

-Louie

Producing Confetti

One of the things that I really like is using confetti in my show. I think it’s something that makes a lot of tricks “pop”. It’s an interesting challenge to frequently use in a show. It’s not easy to steal as a pack, unless you’re using a snowstorm packet, which is a lot more than I want to use for most tricks.

The closest solution I’d found was Viktor Voitko’s SnowShot:

It’s got some limitations, and I don’t like that the gimmick ends up on the floor after the trick. While it sorta blends in with the confetti, if it’s in the performing area, you will need to pick it up, or kick it out of the way.

Yesterday I hit another solution. A while ago I picked up one of Jay Scott Berry’s FS2 gimmicks from a junk magic bin. I just happened to see it the other day and realized that it would be a perfect confetti holder!

Here’s the trial run:

I don’t know if Jay Scott Berry has used confetti in it or not, but it’s looking like the solution I need for the confetti production I was trying to add to the end of my ball routine!

This discovery for me is a classic case of having routines never being finished AND having your vision of what the trick will look like and constantly trying to achieve that. Sometimes you won’t get there, other times you figure it out quickly and usually for me it’s a years long journey to hit the solution. The key is sticking with it!

-Louie