Review: Hypervisual (With Cards) by Jay Sankey

While it doesn't sound as good, a more descriptive title for this DVD and collection of gimmicked cards would be "Encyclopedia of Color Changes and Some Cool Tricks."

Sankey's excellent DVD explains some impressive tricks that you can perform with its set of gimmicked cards, but the bulk of the DVD is devoted to teaching color change techniques. It's a great way to learn these moves.

In all, Sankey teaches 16 color changes that range in difficulty from those that you can master in a short period of time to those that will take lots of practice and refinement.

He teaches the well known Erdnase and Paintbrush changes and includes the Marlo "Twirl" change. I was quite intrigued with his "Botop Change," which is actually more of a card switch. There were many moves that I didn't recognize and Sankey does a great job of teaching the techniques as well as explaining angle issues and situations where to use each. To teach the color changes, Sankey also explains some valuable card basics that are a necessary foundation in card work. He also offers different handlings for each trick and discusses concepts such as how to introduce gimmicked cards into play.

The 11 gimmicked cards allow you to perform some amazing effects. In Locomotion, you visually push a central pip on an ace from one location to another. In Case of Emergency makes a prediction that's hand-written on a card case convincingly change into another one.

An offbeat effect, in Shift, the back design on a selected card mysteriously "shifts" 45 degrees. In Sleeping Beauties, the eyes on the faces of the queen of diamonds fall asleep - they're literally open one moment and shut in the next.

There are a couple of tricks where Sankey shows how to make your own gimmicked cards. In Terra Unfirma, a "pretend hole" that's stuck to a card becomes a real hole. Meanwhile, Uberchange allows a card to visibly change from one card to another while a sticker with a spectator’s initials is stuck to its face.

Finally, Sankey offers a "Do As I Do" style effect called Out of Control. This one has lots of possibilities, but I don't care for the work behind the back by both the spectator and the magician.

Sankey's Hypervisual offers a virtual course on color changes and provides all of the tools and techniques that you need to perform some impressive tricks. It’s well worth the 45 bucks.

-Wayne N. Kawamoto

MSRP: (US) $45

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