The Magicanada Project

Michael Kras · Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 12:35 am Post subject: The Best Torn and Restored?

What, in your opinion, is the best (or your favourite) Torn and Restored effect? It doesn't necessarily have to be a Torn and Restored Card, just any TNR in general. What specific areas does it meet? What are its flaws?

At this point, there are three TNR effects I use.

Ripped At The Seam: Self-explanatory, since this is my own TNR Very Happy

. It only uses a single card, no gimmicks, the card can be signed, and it's very angle friendly as well as being clean in appearance. There are a few problems though... one, which is a big one, is that the card cannot be COMPLETELY restored. I have many, many ways of finishing effectively. One of these finishes involved the entire card being completely restored, but it cannot be examined. The other, I leave it only partially restored (with fair justification) and it may be examined. Another, is to full restore it, then immediately dispose of the card to ditch the evidence.

T-Bone: The Sankey TNR, with a Card-Warp style handling. This is so simple a 5 year old could perform it, and it looks pretty darn good in the right hands. It makes great use of psychology and subtlety to achieve a great illusion... the main problem... it, to me, is not a very natural TNR effect. Two cards a destroyed, but only one is restored? Why not restore the other one? Plus (the following does not register at all with laypeople but it may bug some magicians) the card is completely concealed from view when it is torn.

Undivided: This awesome little ditty is from the brilliant mind of your friendly neighbourhood Brit and mine, Martin Lewis. This is not a TNR Card... rather, a cigarette paper is used instead. This employs brilliant psychological techniques and subtleties to create a visually PERFECT illusion. When Martin did this for a room full of magicians, every single one of us was fooled. We were all waiting for that second paper to be rung in, stolen somehow... after all, his hands were very clearly empty from beginning to end. We never saw him ring in a second piece. His hands were completely empty the ENTIRE TIME, he was not palming a SINGLE FREAKING THING. Needless to say, I was nearly on the floor. The method is just as awesome as the effect... super practical, and it can play to a huge room or a small group. I see no real problems... except perhaps a bit of an angle issue.

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Michael Kras
Forum Administrator

Spellbinder · Joined: 12 Aug 2007 Posts: 17 Location: East Orange, NJ

For Free Comic Book Day (Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 - worldwide) I helped Wiz Kid Qua-Fiki scale down Jim Gerrish's Torn and Restored Comic Book effect so he could perform it close-up in a walk-around setting. You can see the performing conditions HERE: http://www.wizkidzinc.com/WK2009/freeComicDay.htm, but no one thought to take a photo of him in the act of performing the TR comic book.

Anyway, he used a small digest sized "Archie and Jughead" comic and found it very easy to perform in that setting. The small pages tear easily and the smaller pieces are easier to work with for the transformation.

Qua-Fiki has also come up with some new subtlties for the trick which are very easy to impement. His work is included in the e-Book on my site, and we are working on making a video of him performing the effect.
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Professor Spellbinder
http://www.magicnook.com

teddy · Joined: 31 Aug 2007 Posts: 166

I really like Mathieu Bich's TNR method, but it's so complicated I never made the gimmick.

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