Scale Model of Boeing 777-300ER, Made from Manila Folders
lucaiaconistewart.com
lucaiaconistewart.com
[UPDATE] Just to clarify: building an actual jetliner is obviously orders of magnitude harder than building this model. But I think building this model is probably comparable to building a light aircraft like this one: https://www.vansaircraft.com/rv-14/
Sometimes you can make something appear magical by spending far more time on the effect than anyone would ever think to do.
Stunning work. I admire and envy the focus.
Penn and Teller’s Fool Us had a couple of contestants per year that did a trick the hardest way possible. A couple times they gave the person the prize even though they knew how it was done. Like the people who “shuffled” an entire deck into a specific order, and/or used precise cuts rather than using marked cards or swapping the deck.
There have been a couple people they’ve had back three times even if they knew how they did it, because they’re just so good.
This is as good a definition of stage magic as anything, I suspect.
Rory was a master class mentalist — literally world famous. When other world class magicians were on the continent or passing through they'd come visit him. Invariably, he'd make them do a 10m opener for the class (usually mentalist, illusion, and close up). Did I mention the class average was a C?
Anyways, for the final, Rory did his trick: he chatted to us for a few minutes, drawing a picture; then we all had ~30s to draw a picture. Then, he chatted with some people — kinda at random — then picked one person to seal their picture in an envelope. At the end of the class was the reveal: he'd drawn this picture the girl drew. More importantly, just about everyone drew the same picture.
Then he made his point: depending on how he was feeling, there were about a half dozen pictures he could get an audience to draw.
Eye opening.
I keep dice on my desk for generating random digits.
And then... in the final minute or so of the show all of those seemingly random distractions and tangents come together to tie up the various stories and jokes he'd been telling! Decades later when I think about it it still blows my mind. They can't have been random at all. I've no idea if the various distractions were plants, or maybe they never existed at all and everyone in the audience just thought we were all too far away to hear whoever he was talking to? It was such a flawless execution though, only heightened by the fact he'd convinced you he was a rambling unfocussed mess for most of the night.
So it's a bit different, but not that different, to just riff off the cuff in realtime.
Essentially: there are two ways to make something appear magical.
- One is a gimmick (physical or otherwise), which is performed so well as to be invisible to the audience.
- The other is simply doing something effortlessly that seems impossible without spending years of practice... but having actually spent years of practice on it.
He cited some Teller trick that Teller brute forced by just practicing the movements for an entire year until he could do them reliably and flawlessly.
They do award the prize if they know there's more than one way the person could have done it, but they cannot tell for sure which one was it.
And they make it clear their show is not about the prize anyway, it's about the wonder of watching cool magic acts. The prize is a gimmick (but still, it's always fair and never staged).
They always celebrate good magic, regardless of whether they can figure it out or not.
If I remember correctly, the prize is a hook for the producers, it's how they got approval for the show. It's not for the performers, which I guess are simply thrilled to perform for P&T and their audience.
Interesting that I got downvoted for stating what Penn has stated again and again in their podcast.
I guess people find it hard to believe these two guys truly do what they claim to do: award the prize to people who truly fool them, and celebrate all magic acts regardless of whether they are fooled.
They've also stated the prize is an excuse for the show.
They are on record stating this, it's not my guesswork, yet somehow saying this earned me a downvote.
Oh well.
I was amazed. Howinell did he snatch a fly out of the air?
He replied that he spent a couple years in a bed in the hospital recovering from war wounds, with nothing to do. So he practiced catching flies.
Apparently in other sessions he was able to pick a single card. Insane!
I remember seeing this when it was first making the rounds (though I thought it was earlier than ‘14, but that’s what all the press links date to). Incredible.
They were stored in "file cabinets", which can be still seen in Windows .cab file icons.
I'm assuming the guy doesn't have kids or cats, I can't even make a cup of coffee most days without one being in the way!
I used to love to make things when I was younger but I was never this dedicated. I stopped at radio controlled models. I'm glad my mum bought me a TI99/4A when I was a a kid, so my hobby turned into my career.
Ahem. https://newatlas.com/great-paper-airplane-project/21961/
IMHO the actual flight characteristics of the aircraft are inputs to the `ultimate?` predicate function.
Someone (with copious free time) is just a wee bit obsessive.
Hate to say it, but I can sort of relate (but I don't have enough free time to do something this intricate).
your problem is not focus or willingness, it's being motivated by excitement rather than perfection. it's about the object, take yourself and how you feel out of the equation.
I, having ADHD, cannot do any task if it's not motivated by excitement and newness (or forced by raw discipline, which is extremely energy consuming).
Your comment sounds like "it's just a matter of changing your mindset". Maybe I read that wrong. But I know it's not just mindset changing. It's, e.g. with ADHD fundamentally wired into a brain.
Man, I sound like a diva.
I wonder why manila envelopes. does envelope paper have properties uniquely fitted for this kind of modeling, or is it just nice color and suitable weight?
Is age the factor here? feels like they’re just as ubiquitous today as they were when the author was in high school.
I certainly appreciate the idea of crafting something special out of seemingly boring material, but the remark that they were taught to model with this paper in school made me wonder of it does have advantages over basic paper or cardstock.