talkmagic.co.uk

Warning, huggle ramble alert, there is a point though, kinda.....

I have always been tight and I kind of get the feeling I always will be.
Is this due to the high price we pay for things here in the UK, is it the
past experiences of falling for the hype only to be deflated when the package arrives,
or is it that I was an only child and as such refuse to wait for things I can not afford
in a spoilt child kind of way?
Honestly, all of the above.

It is this tightness and a quizical mind that got me interested in making my
own magic props. Some of these things cost a pretty penny, might not be the effect or
method I am after and I hate paying for things when I don't actualy know what I am buying
or how good it is at the intended job.
I have since made a few things and enjoyed the whole process, working out how it works,
building it and tailoring it to me, great fun and quite often better suited to me than the
original items.

I have to say at this point that at no point did I use an advertised, commercialy available
item to discover how to make my versions of the raven or Pro PK.
In the world of law, if I havent ever seen a Raven but I build my own without KNOWING how it
works, I have not broken any laws, its called reversed engineering (thats how IBM created
PCDos to try and kill a young Bill Gates off).

So what have I made?
So far, discounting card tricks or we would be here all day, Ive made a Micro 5 (Pro PK),
a Raven and a money printing machine (had the instructions for this one or I wouldn`t have bothered).


Micro 5 - Pro PK
I love this, a third of the price compared to buying the Pro PK kit. It was looking for
confirmation of my thoughts on this prop that brought me to these forums in the first place.
I wasn't alone in wanting to make my own and ordered my bits that same night.
I don't want to link to those threads as they kind of give the secret away but if you want
to I am sure you can find them. Anway, ordered my "thing" from the USA, £25 including
delivery to my door by a sweating postman and set about making a retracting strap and
shimming anything that wasn't nailed down. Great Great Great effect. Buy one or make one,
you should love it. I don't need to go into what the pk can do but I will just say that
everyone is right, it does do it. My version in tests is a little more powerfull which is
always nice and is cheaper, woooohoooo.
Find it here : http://www.emagictricks.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=4324


Raven
While I waited for my Pro Pk parts I also set about making this, it took me 3 versions but
I now have a great prop that does the same thing as a raven and does it as well.
Cost, a couple of pounds (already had the "claw" part of the device or add another couple).
I have to say working this out was quite hard for me but enjoyable, I have since been shown
the real Raven and I have to say I was close Great trick, another great saving.
Find it here : http://www.emagictricks.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=17_18&products_id=252


Print your own money machine
Ok I'm not a fan of the effect but I was in need of a kids pressie and he loved my magic so
I made him this to see if I could and to curry favour with his lovely mother
All wood, nice little prop and he loves it, it bores me but then I don't have to watch it.
Took more time to craft but for this one I did have instructions so at least I didn't have
to smoke 100 cigs and stay up all night to figure it out.


Ok, so why am I telling you this? Showing off? Letting everyone know how handy I am?
Trying to get in the MO section of this forum? No I just had a point to make really...

I have a magician friend and he has no spare money at all, what comes in goes straight back
out again. As a result hes very good at sleights etc but has no out of the box effects.
This got me thinking about how many people must love magic or want to love it but then see
how costly a hobby it can be. I don't like price exclusivity, it reminds me I'll never have
a pagani zonda car. http://www.paganizonda.com/ sniff.
Anyway the point I am trying to make is this, if you see something you want but can't afford
it, try and make one, get yourself two hobbies for the price of one.
The effects I have made are quality, not because I am a craftsman, far from it, but because
these things are very very simple. Just don't tell anyone how you did it, magic is no longer
magical once you know how it's done.
No out of the box effect will replace working through the books in my sig for example but
while you get those skills together it's nice to use these effects and then later mix with
card/coin sleights and really convince people you are indeed magic.


Obviously this post makes it no clearer to you how to make these things but I hope it
pushes somebody into making something they can't otherwise look forward to having.
Just enjoy your magic, not the commerciality of it.


BaB

ps: any thoughts or did i just get RSI for nothing?

i have probably breached so many copyrite laws, but i myself have scaled up several of the small effects i have read or purchased.
in my time i have had large draw boxes, die boxes and chineese sticks, i even made my own run rabbit run trick.
nowadays i farm the craft stuff out to woody and metaly friends of mine who have lots of expensive dod dads and nothing to justify the expence.

my first made myself trick was achange wallet of the banded card type for changing / vanishing a coin, then there is the bone of contention about scanning a packet card trick like the colour changing kings to aces, and printing them on a4 card laminates.

when i was a satalight and alarm engineer we used raven all the time, of course they wern't called raven's thren

if you can work out how you think something is done then i say more power to your elbow, many effects are reworkings of basic principles think how many different versions youve seen of the sawing a women in half trick.

Yea last week I ordered the [aardvark] ready for my own PK effects. Cost less than £20. Gotta admit still waiting as it's from the States and the post is not great at the moment.

If you have an old computer you can get a half decent [aardvark] or four from the hard drive. Not as powerful as the one I've ordered, then again those things can be too powerful.

I've never seen what you get when you order the full kit. Apart the the [aardvark] and a few easily made bits to go with it, I can't see that you need anything else. I wouldn't really want to use American coins anyway.

I'm looking forward to having some fun, I suppose a video or book on PK effects may be a useful addition, once my imagination has run dry

lol

phew I didnt offend anyone

When ur item arrives we should have a chat, I know nothing about big birds so we can always learn from each other.
Anyway glad I'm not alone in making things, I knew I wouldn't be but I wanted to get across to the unsures that these things are really simple to make.

Had I known what I could type here the post wouldn't have been an essay, sorry about that

BaB

Tom if you go to the emagictricks site and take a look at the particular product we are discussing, it gives far more away. No ***** just the full words with a bit of a description. However I do quite like the use of aardvark

Toad,

The sales blurb on emagictricks may well give away various details, and whether that is right or wrong is not really an issue here.

Tom's comment I feel weren't meant as a reprimand to you are anyone else - but just a request for us all to err on the side of caution.

Personally I feel that the use of "*" is starting to become a standard converntion, and to be honest I am against it.

Secrets should be maintained in open forums such as these for two [main] reasons.
1. To stop Joe Public from easily finding out how an illusion/trick is done
2. To stop magicians from trying to save money on marketed products by discovering how a specific trick is performed.

Using conventions such as D***** L*** or Ma**** may [to an extent] stop the former, but will never stop the latter. A lot of bought tricks we are after all just buying the secret - so it is fundamental we give away as little as possible.

On the grounds that we really do seldom need to use these terms to describe a trick in an open forum (and there will always be exceptions) then I sugeest we never use them.

Aardvark works for me, and in fact it was me that changed your post. Please don't take it personally, and yes I know there are hundreds of other older posts that I could (and maybe should) have also edited.

As I said aardvark works for me.

I do feel that the point about stopping magicians from trying to save money is a moot point, since they would have seen the more explicit details as given on the sites that sell them.

However from now on it will be aardvark

As a well-known founder member of the Tightfisted Club (Motto - 'Short Arms, Deep Pockets), I can understand why folks would like to save cash by making their own items. Assuming you have acquired the details legitimately then there's no real problem. If you borrow your mate's Aardvark and just copy it then it's not really acceptable. If you buy a book where such secrets are explained and/or there are manufacturing instructions then you've paid for the secret so you can, within the Author/Publishers' terms, make your own versions until the cows come home. You'd need to be very sure about performance rights though!

There are many folks who are developing and creating magical miracles as their way of making a living. If we just copy their ideas then it's theft pure and simple. It also means they will probably reveal no future miracles so we all lose out. If a trick is worth the money it will be a good investment. If it's not worth the money then forums such as this will soon be alerted and we'll all know to avoid them.

Make your own by all means but be sure you have the legal right to do so first. If not, buy the trick and count it as an investment.

On the subject of Aardvarks, we at Studio 9 have just ordered a quantity of them from the states, but I think that we will just sell them as aardvarks, and not advertise tham as performing aardvarks as that may be slightly dodgy. In any case it isn't hard to teach an aardvark to move things round on a table, and anyone with a bit of imagination will be able to come up with hundreds more tricks to teach it without recourse to a book of aardvark tricks. As for aardvark accessories, again, anyone with a bit of resoursefulness will be able to find all that they need to make everything in their house aardvark compatible just by wondering around DIY stores and the like.

So does anyone think that we are being immoral by stocking these? We also have a Micro5 pro kit on sale, so could we be accused of copyright theft or similar? I don't think so as magicians have been using aardvarks ever since they were discovered, and I wanted a big one even before I heard of the micro 5 and it's derivatives (does starting to sell an M5 shortly after the micro 5 is put on the market seem odd?) so I feel that we are ok to do this.

Sorry if that seemed a bit jumbled but I am thinking and typing at the same time and it doesn't work very well!

Nick

In the case of a commercial enterprise such as Studio 9, they have a lot more to lose than the private individual if they did something wrong. However, if they buy another version of the Aardvark and also sell the original Aardvark it could be suggested that they are offering customers a wider choice. There are other laws which come into play where prevention of trade is an offence which means that one manufacturer can't stop you selling items from another manufacturer just because they don't like it. It all depends on what sort of commercial agreements have been made, signed, sealed & delivered.

I'd doubt anyone could really take much action if someone bought counterfeit items but they'd be down like a ton of bricks if you made your own counterfeit stock for sale.

(PS Any chance of importing the original version of 'Invisible Aardvark'? I've looked all over the place and and can't see mine anywhere.)

Well I think we are bigger on making our customers happy than making the wholesalers happy!

OK

I understand and agree that the secrets of magic tricks should be protected from the publics eyes, I do want to be considered magical and that depends upon my audience not being wise to what I do.
Though I have to say thats a want not a right, we even know what the"free"massons do these days, lol.

Having said that the only issue I raised was a perfectly legal one, the art of making something you have never seen.
This is legal, regardless of the item working on the same principles or being a staright copy, if you don't know the details of the original it is not theft.
You would not be able to sell it, in the case of something like the raven but with the M5 go ahead. The m5 creator was not the inventor of the gimmick yet he still sells it.
Some inventions are already "open source" to use a computer term.

I know everyone here has made a gaffed card and didnt ask bicycle if it was ok, we know companies also do this.
Have folding 10p makers asked the royal mint if it is ok, do they have the letter from the queen that says go ahead, use my image as entertainment, bend me in half, it makes me look thinner anyway? Probably not.
How many times have you and a friend watched the same video together, purchased or recorded from the tv? Tut tut.
etc etc etc Lets not bash this as we have ALL done it, I live in a glass house and its windy out there so keep the stones in your pockets please.

Yes the ********** thing does give the game away and yes we do need to be carefull, not because it doesn't give the details somewhere else but because thats the rules of this forum.
I just don't like the company protection side of this, if ANY website is selling me a Pro PK kit with american money, shimming supplies and an aardvark for 3 TIMES the price I can buy my own for (not make my own, u just buy and go on this one) then I for one will make one and be happy to do it.
Stop ripping me off and I'll stop being clever and using the money on the person that earned it, not the importer of easily available goods at a vastly inflated price.
I really can't see a problem with that.
This was a thread about THAT not the moral rights and wrongs of it, it isn't wrong, it is legal and is provided for in law.
Read the first post, its legal to come up with an idea thats the same as somebody elses, it is not legal to copy it.
Let people live as they like, sure we have to follow the rules of this forum if we want to stay, and I think by my posts you can see that I am following the rules and do want to stay.
I am currently in negotiation with an american comapny to bring these over en mass, am I wrong? If so I would be interested to hear why.

Thanks for reading another BaB essay.

BaB

BaB

Yes, we do tend to stray from the original postings quite a bit here but the essence of the situation is that it would not be legal to manufacture and sell copies of somebody else's Aardvark effect regardless of how much of a rip off price they charge. It would be just as questionable, but far more difficult to spot and deal with, if you just made your own Aardvark version for personal use. If it's an invisible utility then even on TV it would be difficult to spot your copy. If it's a visible item then you'd probably be in trouble.

Importing en masse from the USA isn't a crime but you may fall foul of established distributorship agreements and the UK agents may decide to seek an injunction to prevent you from selling those goods. In this case you'd be well out of pocket by having stock which can't be sold legally.

It all boils down to ethics. I have no problem with folks trading legitimately and encouraging fair competition but bear in mind that profits are also used for development of future effects as well as personal gain by the inventor/distributors etc. It may be OK to focus their attention of giving a keener price but doesn't help anyone if they then withdraw from the market completely.