Vogue and I spent the last few days reviewing all the reviews. We received several reviews and all of them came from Singaporean magicians. It was a tough call because there were many reviews whom we thought was awesome. But alas, there can only be one winner.

As such, the RDM crew is proud to announce that…

(drumroll please)

The winner of the Great RDM Contest is:

Lee Wei Liang – Singapore

Congratulations. Appended below is his winning review:

FLASH By Chad Long

Once in a while, a brilliant performer would challenge the classics, and make magic relevant again.

Chad Long’s FLASH is a refreshing concept of using “Flash Drives” or Thumb Drives in place of the classic color changing knifes. You may be like me. Someone who has never found the color changing knifes or any paddle routines appealing enough to be added to the regular working repertoire.

But trust me. Let the DEMOs
do the talking (Do me a favor and watch the Demo, skip the trailer) -
http://www.chadlongmagic.com/page8/page1/videos.html

Whether you’re a professional close up magician, or a serious hobbyist who does tricks for your friends and family, I am sure you can relate to the patter or find it insightful enough to script your own. The beauty of this effect is not only in the potential of its presentational ideas, but also because it looks good enough for professional situations. (Unlike some other cheap plastic paddles which is a questionable taste for serious magicians).

Package Deal / Quality of Product :

What you will get is your nicely packaged Flash Drives along with a nice bag for you to keep them together. You will find in your
package one jumbo black drive, one black drive and one red/black drive. I am not conscious about taking care of my props, this quality made product will probably last a life time even if I don’t handle it with care. Excellent choice of colour for the Flash drives; Vibrant Red, Classy Black.

Chad also added that much effort has been put into the manufacturing of the product made from moulds of CAD drawings.

Method/Teaching:

Flash also comes along with FULLY COLOURED detailed instructions and photos. Adding on to that, free explanations demos are available on Chad Long’s website too! If you are reading this, chances are you have enough experience to play around with this gem right after you get it even without the explanations!

While there is much potential to this versatile prop, the basic routine only requires the paddle move. The sleight is in no way difficult to master, and it is absolutely effortless to execute thanks to the optimal size, shape and texture of the Flash Drive.

Bonus ideas are also provided by Chad. If you are a seasoned performer, you probably have a million ideas in your head already adding other sleights like the flick stick move, strike vanish etc can turn this effect into a more dynamic routine.

Final Words:

Jon Racherbaumer has used the acronym S.A.V.O.R to describe the qualities of a classic effect in magic,

Simple – The props are simple.
Flash Drives are very much a daily part of our lives. It is probably
going to only get more common from here on! They are not only
instantaneously recognizable, the patter behind it makes it a very
motivated routine too!

Ageless – The color changing knifes
routine has been around since 1960s, and there must be a reason why
basic effect never fails to survive through time even till today.

Visualness
- Paddle routines have always had a very visual nature. Especially with
the Jumbo ending as the finale!

Open – As mentioned, this
versatile prop allows for countless of variation not only in terms of
presentational ideas, but also with incorporating different sleights to
provide a more complete routine.

Recurring – This is probably
the reason why the Jumbo finale works well! Despite the recurring
effect, the routine is well structured to ensure a motivated finale!

I never found a reason to carry around knifes in my pocket. Flash Drives other hand, makes a whole lot sense.

WOW Factor : 9/10
Durability : 9/10
Practicality : 9/10
Value for money : 8/10 (Including shipping, it costs $40 USD)

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Congratulations Wei Liang! An excellent review. We will be contacting you soon. A big thank you also to those who sent in your reviews as well! Expect more Contests organised by Red Dot Magic in the near future! =D

The Great RDM Contest – Midyear Giveaway is now officially closed. Over the past 2 weeks, we received several well written reviews. It was really surprising

We would like to thank all of the contestants for making the effort to write reviews of exceedingly high standards. Thank you for your participation and we hope you continue to support Red Dot Magic – Singapore’s Magic Portal.

Both Vogue and I are now in the process of reviewing the reviews and it will be released in a few days so be sure to check by this site for the announcement of the winners!

Till then,

This is Thor, signing off.

Vogue and I both sat down yesterday and started to draw lots for the 10 lucky winners. We received emails from all across Asia, from Singapore to Indonesia. As such, we are pleased to announce the winners for our Cyril: Simply Magic Q&A contest!

Here are the 10 lucky winners:

1. Lim Phaik Hoon – Singapore
2. Javier Tan – Singapore
3. Ramalingeswari Govindan – Malaysia
4. Min Si Thu – Singapore
5. Loo Chee Kean – Singapore
6. Joseph Ryan M. Mones – Phillipines
7. Marcelo Massuyoshi Iwamoto – Brazil
8. Thanthip (Eva) Veeravanitkul – Thailand
9. Ho Xue Yan – Singapore
10. Chia Wai Kian – Singapore

To the people whose name is in the list, congratulations! We will be contacting you guys shortly. Check your inbox today to get the details. To the people that have not been so lucky, cheer up! We have loads of fun activities lined up in this website so be sure to check it out.

Cheers,

RDM Crew.

Joseph Ryan M. Mones

Cyril: Simply Magic Q&A contest is now officially closed. Over the past 3 weeks, we have received dozens of replies that left our emails flooded. We have people ranging from Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, India and even Macau.

We thoroughly enjoyed the 3 part series of Cyril: Simply Magic and we hope you have enjoyed it too.

Cyril has indeed touched the hearts of many. Some of his fans  also took the chance to expressed  their admiration via a comment in the contest post.

Both Vogue and I are now in the process of compiling the name list of the lucky 10 winners and it will be released in a few days so be sure to check by this site for the announcement of the winners!

Till then,

This is Thor, signing off.

Fast forward to 1st September 2009, I am glad to announce that this small little hobby of ours is still alive and very much kicking! In fact, we have definitely gotten more and more serious about RDM.

And today, as RDM turns one! We have decided to launch RedDotMagic 1.0! Optimized for FireFox users. (If you got to use Internet Explorer, use the latest version!)

As RDM strives to give our readers the highest quality, most relevant and bite-sized information about the magic scene both locally and internationally, we needed upgrading as our previous layout couldn’t allow us to do that. After about a month of planning and reconfiguring the site, we are glad to say that:

RDM is now bigger, better and stronger!

we know that you are going to like the new rdm!

We would like to thank a few people for helping our with the site. Thanks to Debra and Y! FC Admin for their help in re-designing our site! They have been awesome!

So keep your eyes glued to this space for all the latest happenings in the magic fraternity.

So here’s a toast to RDM.

YAMMMM SENGGGGGGGGG!

RDM is currently having a make-over. As we strive to make RDM a premier site for local and overseas magicians, we want to give you guys the best and hence we are currently doing some frontend designing and backend tweaking to serve you guys better.

We are really excited about it!! So… Bear with us until then

RDM will be back! Bigger and Better!

Cheers,

RDM Crew

The team here at RedDotMagic would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to J C and Ning. On the 27th June 2009, Illusionist duo J C Sum and Magic Babe Ning have done Singapore proud by setting a new record of performing 15 illusions in 5 minutes!

In this action packed day, The team from RedDotMagic also went for the one night only “Magical Wonder With Birds” by Priscilla Khong and the Asian Youth Games Preview Ceremony as Kiki Tay, a well-known local magician, infused magic into one of the items for the event.

Be sure to check out our coverage on all of the above events right here at Red Dot Magic!

Stay right here with us!

Updated:

Asian Youth Games Preview

The Impossible Record

“Magical Wonder With Birds” by Priscilla Khong

We are really excited to share such wonderful news that our magic community has installed for us! As promised, June will be a month filled with mega magic events such as “The Impossible Record” and the latest “Inversion” escape by Magic Babe Ning.

Once again, our congratulations to Charlie Caper once again for his win at Sweden’s Got Talent! Our regards also goes to Stephane Jardonnet for dropping by our site! =)

We will be putting up more interviews and coverages for these events that are happening. You can expect to see more artists featured on our site in the next few weeks. Also, we will delve into the community of the XCM ( Xtreme Card Manipulation) community and find out more about their works!

Till next time!
RDM Crew

Hurray! Because you guy can expect more frequent updates from us starting from today!

Since the survey we conducted some time back ago, we are deciding to implement some changes to Red Dot Magic. Well, we are starting off with the small changes first. We are looking at a possible revamp and restructuring of how RDM will be run in the future.

If you have been following the news buzzing around the magic fraternity, you can expect more events happening in the months of June and July. *rubs hands*

Hope to hear more from you guys and enjoy your school holidays students!

We’re off to catch Kiki Tay’s “Waah! Magic!”

Till next time,

RDM Crew

Yet another RDM update here. We have just given out the RDM prize to Ashraf today! After a long long time, we both managed to squeeze out sometime to meet and we had a great chat. Didn’t know that he and I have so much in common. Haha.

(P.S. Remember the OSA if you get what I mean! Thanks! )

Anyways, Both Vogue and I have decided to create a new category called RDM Interviews. We would be placing all the exclusive interviews done by RDM there. (Also because its really hard work and it deserves a whole new category based on the time we spend working on them!) We are now actually working on the transcript of the interview we had with John Teo quite some time back. Both of us have been tied down by similar mandatory commitments.

Hence, updates will come not come out as often but we will definitely do so when we have the chance. Updates will be more frequent in 2 weeks time hopefully and we are guessing that we will have lots of events to cover in the month of june and july!

Hope to hear more from you guys!

Till next time,

RDM Crew