Im looking to come up with a great effect how should I do it are there any DVDs that would help me

Thanks
Jeremy

A dvd isn't going to teach you inspiration. Just think of things that are impossible, but would be cool to see, THEN work out how to do it.

An effect I'm planning: pieces of a robot are assembled. It gets up, dances or serves drinks, or something, then takes itself apart to reveal an assistant underneath.

i have been trying to this but every thing i think of has been done before or is impossible (i cant think of any way to do it)

This won't do the work for you, but i might be a help.

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/1000

Good luck

This is just the type of thing I am looking for is there anything else like this are there any books

See also, Fitzkee's, "The Trick Brain" for some ideas.......

If you really can't think of a completely new trick, maybe try putting a creative spin on an old trick.
There's another one I'm planning out, it's a ziptie escape. You show that you've escaped in the middle of the trick as a gag (you ask someone to fetch a wand from a drawer, and point to it with a free hand,) then at the end, instead of showing that you've escaped, the zipties have changed colors.
Here's another creative take on an older principle:

May I ask....How long have you been doing magic?

4 years

Well, by now you should probably have enough basic understanding in magic that creative new effects should just start coming to you....or they won't. I'm not saying that you are not the"creator type," though it is a possibility, but I am saying that it probably won't help you to "force it." Chris Beason has been doing a lot of research on creativity lately. Hopefully he will chip in so I won't get into the nitty gritty but I will say that one thing you probably shouldn't do is try to be creative. I guess creativity suffers from this. What you can do is explore other aspects of creativity. First step, take the effects you already know and simply modify them for your own personal style.

I shall try and do that and see where I get

If you still have trouble putting a new spin on old effects, I suggest looking into lateral thinking. One way to "be creative" is to randomize known concepts. For example, you could take a whole bunch of magic techniques and concepts, write them on cards, shuffle them, draw three at random, and see what you can make of it.

Any kinds of ideas I've come up with for effects have been muses. Alot of my great ideas come that way. I've found that they tend to become more frequent with the more technical (And dramatic) knowledge I learn. I figure this is just an issue with experience. Before an artist can create a Mona Lisa on canvass, he's gotta start doing portraits, still lifes, and general doodling.

-ArchAngel_G

Well, by now you should probably have enough basic understanding in magic that creative new effects should just start coming to you....or they won't. I'm not saying that you are not the"creator type," though it is a possibility, but I am saying that it probably won't help you to "force it." Chris Beason has been doing a lot of research on creativity lately. Hopefully he will chip in so I won't get into the nitty gritty but I will say that one thing you probably shouldn't do is try to be creative. I guess creativity suffers from this. What you can do is explore other aspects of creativity. First step, take the effects you already know and simply modify them for your own personal style.[/quote]

I shall try and do that and see where I get[/quote]
If you still have trouble putting a new spin on old effects, I suggest looking into lateral thinking. One way to "be creative" is to randomize known concepts. For example, you could take a whole bunch of magic techniques and concepts, write them on cards, shuffle them, draw three at random, and see what you can make of it.[/quote]

I love that idea that would work so well

Hey Jeremy,

Creativity is a difficult topic to have a straight answer for. It is something that is different for everyone, and is never completely surefire. It is far easier to explain how not to shatter creativity than it is to talk about how to be creative.

A surprising amount of people completely disregard the basic principals of psychology that allow people to be creative. The first and most important thing to do when trying to be creative is do it for your own good. While this does sound somewhat strange, any sort of extrinsic motivation (even indirect) can be a creativity killer.

In Daniel Pink's fantastic book DRiVE, Pink references a study from Teresa Amabale back in the 1970's. Essentially, she hired a large group of professional artists to participate in a study. Along with the artists, she hired a board of professional art critics who had no idea that they were even participating in a study.

She had the artists decide on a collection of commissioned and non-commissioned works, but gave almost no artistic direction as to what the artists could create. Some of the artworks were just paid for (the commissioned).

So, all of the artworks were finished and Amabale took them and had each one critiqued on a scale of "creativeness" and "technical skill". The art critics had no idea that they were part of a study, or which art was commissioned.

The results? The artwork that was commissioned was rated consistently less creative than the non-commissioned works. However, the most interesting part is that the technical skill was rated the same across the board.

So what does this say about magic? While the tricks you create with extrinsic motivation in mind (any form of reward, being money, publishing or good feedback from others), the creativity is consistently less.

Another point that has been proven time and time again is the feeling of primary use. The magic that is often considered "better" and "more creative" across the board is that which uses objects and principals in a way for which they aren't typically used.

Karl Duncker had interesting experiments about this in 1945. He had hundreds of people participate in a study where they would enter a room. In the room, there was a table and a cork board hanging on the wall. Karl would present each participant with 3 things: a lit candle, a box of tacks and a book of matches. The challenge was to somehow adhere the candle to the cork board without letting the dripping wax touch the table.

Many people tried tacking the candle to the cork (which didn't work). Others attempted to create a "tack cradle" for the candle (which also didn't work). Eventually, it occurred to the participants that if you emptied the box of tacks, you could tack the BOX to the wall, and stick the candle inside. It would stand up and the wax wouldn't drip to the table.

A relatively simple solution (simplicity is considered VERY good in magic effects) but one that is not typically considered because that is not the box's primary use. When creating magic effects, look at each object (and each part of each object) in terms of what it can do and not just what it does.


Those are two tips in creating great magic effects (or, moreso, not creating bad effects). There are some excellent resources on the subject though. Jay Sankey's Create Your Own Magic DVD is excellent in terms of how to inspire yourself, but does little in the way of informing you on what to do to be creative.

My advice (which may not be everyones) is to study creativity theory. Once you know the theories on why creativity works, where it thrives... etc, it is much easier to actually be creative. Creativity is an art, so it is difficult to become better by study, but studying WHY it works can be effective in attempting to create situations in which you create the best magic that you possibly can.

I recommend reading Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly, DRiVE by Daniel Pink, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and if you can find a copy, The Nature of Creativity by RJ Sternberg (which actually references Teresa Amabale and Mihaly Csikzentmihaly on numerous occasions).

Just my two cents.