The Eye of the Last Dragon by Tom Stone
On the surface, this a great ebook collection on creating an act with multiplying billiard balls. But what’s really going on in The Eye of the Last Dragon is we are witness to Tom Stone’s approach to creativity. He asks the right questions of himself and his props, and the results are an astonishing new collection of approaches with this classic prop. You could create an act with balls with just this ebook. But more importantly, you’ll learn valuable skills about creativity in general.
Contents:
Mitosis Maneuver – One ball is split into four.
Negative Structure – A plot idea.
Back to De Kolta – A vanish of three balls.
Ball Climax – Handling notes for an idea by Karrell Fox.
…and more
I like Tom’s e-books very much. They are amazingly well-illustrated and contain more useful information than many DVDs that go for twice the cost. The “Last Dragon” book is filled with alternate ways of looking at the shell as a gimmick, and had me seeing the balls in a new light.David Regal
Tom Stone’s “The Eye of the Last Dragon” is much more than a book on billiard ball magic. It is a look at how magicians approach props and effects, how we too easily fall into the trap of adopting methods and story lines from the past, how we close our eyes to the potential of things which may seem familiar to us.Along the way, Tom gives the reader new ways to approach magic, not just with the balls. But I do not mean to diminish his innovative ideas using those objects. he combines the balls and shell with a Topit for some extraordinary magic, adapts gimmicks in original ways, and even comes up with what might be a totally new effect (in his Negative Structure section).People from Geoffrey Buckingham to Richard Kaufman have fallen in love with the idea of billiard ball manipulation and written excellent texts. But Tom Stone has taken the balls into the 21st century with some startlingly new and refreshing ideas, elegantly expressed and well illustrated.Matthew Field
