talkmagic.co.uk

I just saw this video on youtube. This guy is doing a couple of flourishes, but I just want to say...take a look at his erdnase change!

It is soooo smooth!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=c3XkSGoqMIU&search=card%20flourishes

Looks quite bad to me

i guess it is each to his own, but in my opinion I thought it was rather good.

Sorry mate i thought that Houdini change looked horrible. For starters he obviously pushes the card forward and it just has a sloppy feel.

ah well, I guess that I am just crazy then. It may just be my opinion, but I did like it

I thought it was very smooth too. I've seen better ones but heck this is a very, very good one...

well at least I am not alone

Maybe you're just used to seeing horrendous erdnase changes, so when you see a bad one you think it's good.

Don't be mean, Euan.

It is indeed below average. The first card is visibly pushed to the front. That's a serious minus for an Erdnase change. His Erdnase movements are graceful enough, but they're too fast. That's probably why u liked it, the speed of it. I presume this because a friend once told me that he really likes the change when performed very fast. But it's the slow and graceful movements that leave you befuddled.

Just my humble opinion.
Mydas

I'm not being mean. I just think people are conditioned into seeing bad card handling as the norm or better.

True, I didn't like how he pushed the card up at the start. That bit took some points away for me.

I didn't have problems with the speed. Whether it was fast or not didn't really matter for me so long as it doesn't look like he's just pulling another card over the top one. In this case, it didn't betray that fact (I mean the worst types are those with stiff as board fingers that just slide up and down the face of the deck in an even stiffer motion) and it looks convincing enough that he was just waving the hand over the face rather than making a mechanical up-and-down movement. Plus he didn't fumble at the steal, no edges peeking, no telling movements... All in all a good effort.

So, in my defence, I'll say that other than the first card being pushed up bit, the rest was actually pretty good.

I concur.

I didn't see anything particularly interesting about the Erdnase - it wasn't as bad as some but I've seen much better ones. It looked jerky to me.

The flourishes, though, looked pretty awful to me. The sybil cut in particular looked like he didn't know what he was doing. The packets were uneven and he spent ages trying to cut the last packet while not looking like he was going to drop it. The butterfly cut was slow and the Werm (was it the Werm?) looked really awkward.

Overall, more practice please!

Kati

i agree with katrielalex, i also have seen better. the guy demonstrating Nemesis on penguin magic's performance is amazing.

The colour change shown was a bit 50/50. It was smooth, agreed, but on the same hand, the initial pushover was far to obvious.

Not being a great fan of XCM or flourishes for the sake of flourishes, I find it unfair to slot a colour change into a display of this kind, as it cheapens the usefulness of a colour change when used as a part of magic.

For my tuppence, XCM isn't magic. It's simply juggling with cards