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I an looking for a method to change a fish in to a rose. I want to use a fish about 15 cm long. It will be performed reasonably close to groups of people. I have been looking but not found anything suitable. Can anyone point me in the right direction of a useful book or DVD. Feel free to pm me if you dont want to post a reply here.

One final thing it won't be a real fish.

What kind of fish will it be? Sponge? Rubber? Plastic? Unspecified?
Did you want it to happen in your hands or in some kind of container?

Though I've never done anything like this I'd imagine if I were going to develop something like this by starting a routine with a thin red spongey fish or a cloth fish and rolling it into a ball it could look like the head of a red rose and you could do some kind of switch, thus allowing the change to happen at a later moment. But then I am a little obsessed with sponge right now...

-Stacy

Strictly speaking this would be a transformation rather than a vanish so, if it's a real fish, how about one of those 'mirror' glasses? Pour fishy into it, do 'the move' to reveal a very similar coloured rose, remove rose and present it with a suitable flourish to the lady of your choice. (I guess I'm just a romantic at heart..... )

It would be a plastic pretend fish, I don't want to use sponge. It is in a comedy routine.

It will be given to a lady, I have been looking at using a silk to use during the change.

Is it a real flower? Because a fake flower would be robust enough to be inserted inside a hollowed out plastic fish and pulled out with a flourish that sleeves the fish...

-Stacy

A real flower is preferable and a 15cm fish wont hold very much. It is annoying me now.

Nic Castle wrote:A real flower is preferable and a 15cm fish wont hold very much. It is annoying me now.

Yikes, I didn't want to annoy you I was just exhausting possibilities.
Theres a method for appearing a flower in the book Gift Magic (various authors, but the only names I can remember from the list are Eugene Burger and Jeff McBride) but it's sort of designed as an opener because the setup is hard to do surreptitiously. I imagine it could be merged with a fish prop to meld the two but like I said the setup is tricky. I can't think of any others.

I guess I'll leave this conversation now.

-Stacy

Fish vanish + flower production.

I think the latter is the trickier part of the equation, because there are a couple of obvious ways to do the vanish. One of the ones I can thing of would probably work well, and I don't think you could top it. Ahem.

Having a real flower ready somewhere while doing the vanish, with the flower large enough to be impressive is not easy. I am wondering about using some kind of hold-out, but must confess that we're now entirely outside my experience!

I am thinking along the lines of throwing the fish from hand to hand, steal the flower, vanish the fish on the final throw across and there you have it.

The4thCircle wrote:
I guess I'll leave this conversation now.

Sorry, back again I had a think on the method I was suggesting from Gift Magic and figured out a way to incorporate the sleeving of a fish, but after a quick test here in the living room I've found that unless your hands are massive, 15cm is probably too big*.

You need to be able to hold it tip to tail between your finger and thumb outstretched in an L. I could only manage a 10cm rigid length**, also the flower production is a little angle-y.

However having looked at the sizes you're contemplating I disagree that a decent false flower couldn't fit in a 15cm fish. I think there'd be ample room.

- Stacy

*Please don't put me in the innuendo bingo for this
**Or this.

Is it a hollow rubber fish?
Try something like the colour changing hankie effect. The rose could emerge from the mouth as the skin is pulled back.***
The fish is turned inside out and the innerds could become a load of foliage

*** ditto the innuendo bingo warning from above !!

I'm wondering if it might be easier if you were to transform the fish into a silk and them produce the flower from the silk?

Not sure if that would suit you or not...

What I really like about all this is that nobody has asked why anyone would want to transform a fish into a rose, we just take it for granted that the effect needs to take place and get on with figuring out methods of doing it – unlike lay folk who, on hearing the same question, would probably phone for the men in white coats to come and deal with the lunatic. Magicians really are wonderful people!

Lady of Mystery wrote:I'm wondering if it might be easier if you were to transform the fish into a silk and them produce the flower from the silk?

Not sure if that would suit you or not...

Great idea ...and you could have the silk printed so that it looks exactly like the Fish, and then produce the flower from it. You could also dip the flowers in tuna oil but I guess this would be a step too far eh?

The4thCircle wrote:

Nic Castle wrote:A real flower is preferable and a 15cm fish wont hold very much. It is annoying me now.

Yikes, I didn't want to annoy you I was just exhausting possibilities.
Theres a method for appearing a flower in the book Gift Magic (various authors, but the only names I can remember from the list are Eugene Burger and Jeff McBride) but it's sort of designed as an opener because the setup is hard to do surreptitiously. I imagine it could be merged with a fish prop to meld the two but like I said the setup is tricky. I can't think of any others.

I guess I'll leave this conversation now.

-Stacy

I was not vetting annoyed with you just the proble, dont be so touchy.

jomarchan wrote:

Lady of Mystery wrote:I'm wondering if it might be easier if you were to transform the fish into a silk and them produce the flower from the silk?

Not sure if that would suit you or not...

Great idea ...and you could have the silk printed so that it looks exactly like the Fish, and then produce the flower from it. You could also dip the flowers in tuna oil but I guess this would be a step too far eh?

This sounds workable. Even the fish oil might work.

Thanks everyone for your help