YoYo Related News From Around The World
Nothing like a little apartment sesh with some friends to keep things fun. Check out a pile of the good stuff from Alec Campbell, David Ung, Fuego Ferrari, and Jorel Baello.
Yoyos used are the CLYW Gorge, YoYoFactory Confusion, Unspoken/2Sick Decoy, and CLYW Compass.
Take a look at the other entries as well!
Hey guys, my interview with Keiran Cooper and Patrick Canny for the Scales podcast was just released! I had the pleasure of talking to them about how we used to share yo-yo tricks when I first started yo-yoing versus how we share them now. Listen to the episode below:
The main moral of the interview is: I miss yo-yo videos. Sharing tricks on Instagram through #trickcircle has a lot of pros… but there is something special about making an entire curated package in a trick clip video. So, I thought it would be fun to host a video contest to try and get a few more clip videos out there! So here are the rules…
1) All videos submitted must have the following splash screen at the beginning of the video for 5 seconds.
Click here to download contest splash screen
2) The minimum total duration for the video is 1 minute and 30 seconds.
3) Upload your video on YouTube with the following title format: “Scales Video Contest – name of video”
4) Submit your name, email, and a link to your video at the submission box at the bottom of this page.
5) The deadline for video submissions is Monday, June 26th, 2017 Monday, July 3rd. This gives you a little over a month to come up with a video idea, film, edit, and upload!
The guidelines for this contest are pretty open so that everyone entering has a lot of freedom in what kind of video they want to make. I will be judging all of the videos and choose my top 3. The top 3 will receive a ton of bragging rights and YoYoFactory and YoYoExpert were kind enough to put up some great prizes! The prizes are:
Now get out there and go film! Thanks a ton to the Scales Collective, YoYoNews, YoYoFactory, and YoYoExpert for supporting the community and helping me put this contest together!
Jeffrey Pang brings us a ground level view of the 2017 Pacific Northwest Regional YoYo Contest, held recently in Seattle, WA. Featuring all the good stuff from Evan Nagao, David Ung, Colin Beckford, Harrison Lee, The Bird, Keiran Cooper, and plenty more.
NEW TRICK DUMP FROM DAVID UNG! THIS IS NOT A DRILL; WE REALLY HAVE A NEW TRICK DUMP FROM DAVID UNG! Make yourself a sandwich and settle in for some sweet new tricks from your favorite dude.
Yoyo used is the YoYoFactory x Turning Point Ex Machina.
Basecamp, the ongoing collaborative brand from YoYoFactory and CLYW, brings us some more of the good stuff with this new video featuring Alec Campbell (CLYW) and David Ung (YoYoFactory).
Yoyos used are the Basecamp Jackknife, Flight, and Sherpa.
Basecamp, the new collaboration brand by CLYW and YoYoFactory, kicked off with three new yoyo releases. The Expedition for competition, the Jackknife for fingerspins and fun, and the Moonshine for walking the dog in style. The Moonshine is a slimline, responsive pocket yoyo meant to be played and beaten up, and we’ve got video to prove it. Featuring Alec Campbell, David Ung, Petr Kavka, Aaron Davis, and more flyaway dismounts than you’ve seen in a long damn time.
The Basecamp Moonshine is a one-time production run, never to be produced again.
The Basecamp road trips have begun! Today we have a new video from the crew that started on the West Coast and will be arriving tomorrow in Cleveland. Check out smooth tricks and big smiles from David Ung, Petr Kavka, Alec Campbell and Aaron Davis.
Yoyo used is the Basecamp Expedition.
Photo by YoYoFactory
David Ung is kind of a genius when it comes to making up yoyo tricks and putting together great clip videos. For a while now, David’s been sharing his innovative tricks with the community and making a name for himself as an extremely creative yoyoer with a lot of talent. Sponsored by YoYoFactory, David recently released his new video, “Daydream” and is without a doubt maintaining his reputation as a force to reckoned with in regards to trick creation. His short, subtle tricks are amazing, and he is along the same lines of great, modern trick-creators like Adam Brewster and Guy Wright. I was really excited to interview David, and we talked tricks, his videos, and more! Enjoy!
David, you’re one of my favorite yoyoers and are, in my opinion, a master at coming up with super creative tricks. When did you first pick up a yoyo?
Thanks for the kind words, Matt! I think my story with yo-yos is pretty similar to most people’s my age. When there was the huge yo-yo boom in the late 1990s, I learned to throw a sleeper on a cheap transaxle yo-yo and that was pretty much the extent of my tricks. Then in middle school (around 2005), I saw a FAST 201 commercial on TV and thought it looked super cool. A friend of mine bought one at the store and started to learn, so I did some research online and came across JD’s Worlds 2003 freestyle. It blew my mind and I was hooked. I bought a Kickside shortly after (which I then broke–long story).
I remember those commercials! So, I’m guessing you learned most of your tricks back then online?
Yup! I learned most of my fundamentals from André’s old website, Mastermagic. I think I got stuck on the more advanced tricks (ie: Black Hops, Spirit Bomb, Superman, etc) so I started to watch clip videos and tried to come up with my own stuff.
Aside from JD’s stuff, what were some of your other favorite tricks and influences when you first started?
As a beginner, I really tried to absorb anything I could, so there is a lot of influence from pretty much all of the big names. I would probably say that Spencer Berry and Jason Lee were the biggest influences in my early style, you can see this in my older videos “Visage”, “Incidental”, and “To and Fro”. Actually, if you watch Spencer/Jason’s video “The Fidget” and watch my videos “Incidental” and “Broke,” you’ll see that my videos were actually a bit of a tribute. I think my yo-yoing is mainly focused on doing subtle moves rather than constructing whole tricks (which is why I started filming short moves on Instagram–which I think lead to #trickcircle), so I find a lot of inspiration from pretty much everyone.
I love a lot of your older videos, when I started making my own tricks they definitely inspired me because they seemed like something that I would come up with. As I went on though, my tricks kind of branched out into something more unique to me. I definitely see the Jason/Spencer influence! What was your method to making up your own stuff then?
Back then, I was a big proponent of learning on a responsive yo-yo to get proficient at yo-yo control. After I had a solid foundation (smooth yo-yo control + tricks like White Buddha, Skin the Gerbil, etc) I just sort of stumbled on things. I spent a LOT of time watching yo-yo videos back then, so sometimes I would see a trick and then think of my own variation and sort of keep it in the back of my mind until I had a chance to try it out.
That’s definitely a good method, it worked well because a lot of your older (and newer!) tricks are really good. How did you end up getting sponsored by YoYoFactory?
Ben used to run the “Project Red Alert” blog back in G5/GM2/888 era which was basically the YYF blog that had all of the info on new releases. He posted my video “Visage” and I was super excited about it. It was a really big deal for me at the time, so I sent him an email just saying thanks. He responded saying how he really enjoyed the video and he mentioned wanting to sponsor/support me somehow, but I wasn’t quite at the Contest Team level. After a couple of emails, he asked me if I would be interested in joining a YoYoFactory Junior Team if they started one. I said yes, and that’s how the Junior Team was started. We then had video “auditions” and ended up adding Paul Kerbel, Patrick Borgerding, John Chow, and Yuji Kelly to the team. Looking back, it was a really impressive line up.
That is an impressive line-up, that’s awesome! One of my favorite videos of yours is “Broke”, which is a straight up trick video that’s over 4 minutes long. How long does it take you to compile enough tricks for a video like that?
“Broke” is a good one, I was always a big fan of those pure trick videos. Four minutes of new tricks sounds impressive at first, but I think it’s important to note that it was released three years after my last video at the time, which was “Your Future’s With Us” (I’m not counting “Edit,” which was just a quick clip).
What do you do to stay creative?
I don’t really do anything in particular to stay creative, I have periods of highs and lows. Being invited to Steve’s 365 Yo-Yo Tricks project with Ed, Drew, Nate, and Guy (+ guests!) was a big help, though. That year was really good for me. Actually, a lot of the tricks in “Daydream” have moves that directly came from that project.
That’s true, I’m not sure if I could come up with that much great stuff even in 3 years. For those that can’t tell yet, you make a lot of good clip videos. Do you have any creative inspiration behind those? You have a good variety with your videos too which I like.
In high school I got really interested in film making after talking to Miggy and Spencer a lot. “PATH to Agartha” is a tribute to Miggy’s “Tunnels” video, while “Incidental” and “Broke” are a tribute to Spencer’s “The Fidget.” I also remember talking to Bergy about making yo-yo videos that are tributes to the music video of the song. I think he wanted to do a video to Lisztomania by Phoenix. I thought that was such a neat idea and was really into Tokyo Police Club at the time, so I tried to make “Your Future’s With Us” a tribute to the music video for “Your English Is Good.” I thought it did a great job of capturing the feeling of a bunch of friends relaxing and hanging out.
“Daydream” was made as a goodbye video to LA. I was born and raised in LA and I’m moving to Seattle soon, so I wanted to celebrate my time in the city with a video that incorporated beautiful LA scenery with a nostalgic vibe. I like to think that the most important thing in a yo-yo video is the quality of the tricks, but I try very hard to incorporate a theme to give my videos an extra oomph. That’s partly because I’m not a very competitive yo-yoer, so a lot of my presence in the community is through my videos.
So, what were the ideas and process behind your new video, “Daydream?”
“Your Future’s With Us” was my favorite video I’ve ever made. It was my first time shooting in HD video, I filmed it with the help of my friends, and I learned how to use some video editing software for it too. It had good vibes, music, and color. For years I wanted to make a sequel to it, but I felt a ton of pressure (mostly from myself). If I went through the work of making a sequel, I wanted it to be better.
It had to stay true to theme of “Your Future’s With Us,” it had to have better tricks, and it needed to feature some of my favorite places in Los Angeles.I have tried filming for a sequel for a couple of years now, and I’ve always scrapped the footage because the shots weren’t good enough, or the tricks weren’t good enough, or I couldn’t find the right music. But in late December 2013, I learned that I was accepted to the University of Washington for a graduate school program in Chemistry and I decided that I wanted to get a video out before I moved. I decided I wanted to use the song “40 Day Dream” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and I wanted it to be a goodbye video to the city I grew up in, Los Angeles. So I gathered up some friends, and we did a ton of filming in January 2014. I had just gotten a new camera (Canon Rebel T3i) and was learning how to use it. I had 32+ gigs of footage and I ended up sitting on it for the months because school started again and I was really busy. I eventually went back to look at the footage and scrapped almost all of it–it just didn’t look good. I was still learning how to use the camera at the time, and I wasn’t satisfied with the results.
I moved back to LA in June and I rounded up my friends again to do some more filming. We filmed a ton in the peak of the summer and it was HOT! Unfortunately, I wanted to keep my look consistent between the footage in January and now, so I wore my oxford shirt and long pants for continuity. Eventually we finished filming and I sat down to edit it. I went back and forth editing for about a week. The hardest part was getting the colors right, I ended up having to try a couple of different programs to get the color to look the way I wanted it to. There was a lot to do and learn, but I think it all paid off at the end. “Daydream” is a tribute to the city I grew up in, the people I’ve met, and the memories I’ve made. It sounds a little serious for a yo-yo video, but I love LA and all of my friends I’ve made, and I’m going to miss them a lot.
That’s so cool, the whole experience definitely paid off. I think yoyo videos with that kind of thought put into them are the ones that turn out the best. It was so nice to see fresh tricks and a fresh, great video from you! Nice work! I personally think that impressive tricks in impressive clip videos are just as impressive as impressive contests freestyles.
Have you ever thought of having your own signature yoyo? As much as I love competition-ready throws, I also like yoyos that have more of a laid back, steady feel to them which I could see a signature throw of your’s having.
Thanks Matt. I appreciate it! It’s funny, I think I’m actually one of the guys that have been on the YYF team for the longest and doesn’t have a signature yo-yo. I don’t really mind, though, my yo-yo preferences change pretty rapidly. There are days where I’ll want something solid like a Superstar, or something plastic like a Northstar, or something lighter like a Shutter. Maybe a signature colorway or something would be nice. We’ll see!
You’re welcome! My preferences change a lot too, so I know what you mean. I would really have to generalize everything I like best into one yoyo if I ever had my own signature throw. I’ve noticed in “Broke” that a ton of your tricks start with a simple trapeze and all transcend into something different. Do you have any favorite elements or mounts to work with, like the trapeze?
The start/end in trapeze was actually my shoutout to “The Fidget.” Each one of Jason’s tricks ends in a trapeze in that video, and I thought it was a neat way to add a recurring theme into a video. As far as favorite elements go, I really like Magic Drops.
Oh yeah, I never thought about that. You definitely have some of my favorite magic drop tricks. It’s cool how you were inspired by other yoyoers, and made the inspiration into your own thing. What kind of advantages do you think making shorter tricks has as opposed to making longer ones?
I’m not sure if it has any advantages/disadvantages… it’s just an individual style thing. Some people can come up with really long, cohesive tricks (ie: Yuuki, Zach, Ando)… but I can’t. I don’t think I have the trick vocabulary to make really dense, long tricks like those guys do. On the other hand, I can still come up with neat moves and put them in short, < 15 second, tricks. I think Drew (Tetz) and I are really similar in that regard. Short tricks por vida.
I don’t think longer tricks are “better,” but I do think that the players that can create long tricks have an incredibly impressive trick vocabulary and consistency. But I pride myself in making neat, subtle moves in my yo-yoing.
I never thought about that comparison between you and Drew, but that’s totally right. I definitely like your mindset when it comes to making tricks. What advice would you give anyone trying to make their own stuff?
Learn the trick history. There is a ton of gold that people were working on in the old-mid school era when the technology wasn’t as good. A lot of those ideas deserve a second look. Also, style is just as important as originality. If you’re having a hard time coming up with something new, work on being able to perform a trick in a specific way or with a specific look.
I totally agree with all of that! There really is a goldmine of elements from back in the day, and I also think that being able to do things stylishly is important too. Lastly, what can we expect to see from you in the future? Do you have anything yoyo-related planned for when you get to Seattle?
I’m not too sure! I’ll probably do more #trickcircle stuff, but I am pretty much tapped out on new content. I’d love to make a sequel to “Broke” or “Daydream.” I want to try to get Sterling back into yo-yos (maybe film a video!) and I’m hoping to compete at PNWR next year and to do well.
That sounds like a great plan, good luck David! Thanks for doing this!
No problem, Matt. Thanks for having me!
David Ung is one of the most under-sung creative players of the modern era. His new video, Daydream, is the video we’ve been waiting for years to see from David…and it doesn’t disappoint. Amazing work from a gifted player.
Here is a new yo-yo video shot in Los Angeles, CA with the occasional clip from San Diego, CA. I made “Daydream” to complement a video I made about five years ago called “Your Future’s With Us.” I tried to recreate a similar vibe but at the same time incorporate new ideas and a feeling of nostalgia. I lived in Southern California all my life and am moving to Seattle soon, so I wanted to make “Daydream” to celebrate what has been and to look forward to new opportunities. It’s still just a yo-yo video at the end of the day but I worked really hard on it and think it might be one of the best videos I’ve ever made. So please watch, share, and enjoy! As always, thanks to YoYoFactory for all of their support over the years. The yo-yos used in the video are the YoYoFactory Shutter and Severe.
The song used in the video is “40 Day Dream” by Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros.
Special thanks to: Kevin, Henry, Priscilla, Davis, James, Kimberly, Sarah, Nat, and Candace.
Shot on a Canon Rebel T3i. Colored using VSCO Film with Lightroom.
The deeper one gets into yo-yoing, the more one is exposed to all the wonderful jargon and nebulous concepts that its enthusiasts have come up with. One of the trickiest bits of vocabulary to define has always been “technical yo-yoing”: most players know it when they see it, other players can give you a vague definition, and non-players will look at it and walk away shaking their heads.
This particular style of tricks is known for its intense complexity, its focus on slight details & variations in tricks, and its heightened level of difficulty. Yo-yo tricks exploded in growth with the introduction of the bearing, and it could be argued that the roots of technical play were established with Steve Brown, Neff, and the SpinDox during the Renegade era. However, “tech” as we know it would really hit its stride in 2003 with Johnnie DelValle’s groundbreaking championship freestyle.
The focus on intricate string play and long, risky combos was a huge paradigm shift. Though the Eli Hop and other showy choreographic moves have found their way back into competitive play, technical play shows no signs of leaving. If anything, the championship title awarded to Hungarian tech wizard Janos Karancz a decade after JD’s victory seems to indicate a new golden age of tech.
I thought it would be best to turn to the pros to discuss some of the core tenets of technical trick construction, and am proud to feature well-respected trick theorists Mikhail, Rafael, Isaac, Spencer, Gabe, and Jacob. Let’s hear about it.
Mikhail Tulabut (Team YoYoJam): “The simplest way I can define it is a trick/combo whose string geometry is more complicated and dimensional than Double or Nothing. It’s like holding up a flat piece of paper compared to holding up a paper airplane.”
Rafael Matsunaga (Duncan Crew): “For me, if I call something ‘technical’, I’m mostly thinking about complexity of tricks. Even though some simpler concepts may require more technical expertise and are actually harder than what I call technical, I’m probably more inclined to use technical to describe trick with multiple string folds and hard-to-describe mounts and moves.”
Jacob “Elephark” Jensen (Werrd): “I think of modern yoyoing as the sort of yoyoing that focuses primarily on creation and sharing ideas, as opposed to classical yoyoing, which gives importance to mastering a set of tricks and/or performing for the sake of selling yoyos.
I think of technical yoyoing as the facet of modern yoyoing that focuses on concepts and elements for their own sake, or the sake of the trick. The science of yoyo tricks, if you will. … For me, I think the term ‘tech yoyoer’ is most accurately descriptive of a player who studies and preferably attempts to expand the library of trick concepts available to the community. Kind of like a scientist. Okay, exactly like a scientist. And there’s theoretical science and there’s practical science, and each scientist gets to choose how many scoops of each to put on his plate at lunchtime.“
Isaac Sams (Duncan Crew, Innovation Movement): “Technical yoyoing: sequencing that is too complex to fully follow without learning it.”
Spencer Berry: “I usually lump technical yo-yoing into most of the tricks that non-yoyoers may be amazed by, but probably can’t tell apart. Which is a huge lump! To a yoyoer, I could probably even get more specific: tech tricks are those that explore holds beyond the building blocks. Sometimes tech tricks explore new concepts or combine multiple simpler concepts into single motions, but more often than that they are the product of kids seeking originality while they bounce from string to string, knot to knot. If the trick is complicated, it is easier to be unique, right? I often hear tech and flow pitted against each other – but a trick can easily have both or neither and of course grades in between.”
David Ung (Team Yoyofactory): “I think a good trick is one that requires every motion. Extraneous movements in tricks and combos really bother me (in most cases. Some people have really interesting “useless” moves that I think are fantastic). Good tricks generally have great pacing, too. I don’t know exactly how to explain/define good trick pacing… but just look at Yuuki or Charles to get a good idea. There is always enough original material/moves sprinkled throughout the trick to keep you entertained the entire time.”
Gabe Lozano (Duncan Crew, Sector-Y): “To me, a trick or combo should follow a general theme. This can be done in several ways, but my personal favorite is taking a move or hold, and then finding all the neat transitions in and out of that move/hold, and then tying it all together in a way that flows nicely. That way, all the pieces fit together and feel cohesive.”
Mikhail: “1. Dynamics. There should be a rhythm to it. Kind of like the 3 Act structure of story-telling. Setup (Mount), Confrontation (String hits and maneuvers), and Resolution (Banger/Reveal/dismount).
2. Flow. Things should always be moving and feel natural. When I’m working on a trick, I like to feel and “listen” to where the yo-yo and my hands want to go. It obvious when I try a movement and the yo-yo just won’t have it.
3. Surprise/Originality. Natural movement and flow is nice, but I also like to see movements/slack/mounts that come out of nowhere and haven’t been done to death.”
Rafael: “I believe good combos are like good music. Everybody likes a different style, but some characteristics are universal to good combos/music. First of all, a good combo must be well executed, otherwise, it’s the same as a fantastic sheet music being played by a mediocre musician. Then it comes to composition itself. If the elements follow a certain pattern or just go well together, that’s a nice combo. I know that’s a bit vague, but like music, once you listen to a good song or see a good combo, you know it. And just like music, some styles and elements end up becoming a fad and nobody cares any longer, even if people keep doing it (like dubstep, or I guess trap these days)”
Spencer: “I’d say most of MY favorite tricks that I CAN do have sensations to them. Either a motion that just fits right or a theme that carries the yoyo through some sort of story (not necessarily literal, but motions that build, climax, release, arc, etc).
As far as tricks I enjoy watching, my favorites are usually exemplary examples of someone’s personality made yoyo trick. I think Rojas and Haycock are perfect modern examples of this – watching them play they are unmistakeable – often imitated – but never faked. There is a sense of identity – suddenly holds, moves, even tricks you’ve maybe seen before become infused with a fresh personality.
The real challenge, I find, is making a trick sufficiently simple for me to both want to learn it and enjoy doing it. In the past i was drawn to long, complicated, proprietary tricks. Because I knew they were mine and I felt like it was new territory. But I’ve definitely shifted into a seek the simplicity phase where it is equally challenging to find something that is simple but fresh and fun to do.“
Isaac: “Since the ‘modern’ style of yoyoing is so young, we have to take inspiration from the non-yoyo world to make any sense of what we’re doing. Some of today’s best tricks are made like this, and the reason why they’re the best is because everyone can make the connection, not just yoyoers. A good combo has no borders.
Another thing to take note of is utilizing all your possible zones. A really long combo done in front of the player is boring, it usually doesn’t catch enough attention. A well-scoring combo will consist of tech placed inside-arm, outside-arm, overhead, over arm—basically, cover as much area as you can.”
Gabe: “I personally dislike combos that are disorganized. If you’re throwing in hops, boings, stalls, grinds, arms, etc. into one combo, it’s just a disorganized mess. Even if every element is cool, when you throw them all together, your elements don’t get the recognition they deserve because they’re surrounded by too many other moves that don’t complement it. The trick then becomes forgettable. Good tricks are memorable, and having a strong theme and focus is key.”
Isaac: “What kills a combo for me is when a player stays in a mount for a while without accelerating through the trick. What I love about the Russian style is that their combos only consist of ridiculous transitions, so you can barely tell when they are in a mount before they’re already out.”
Rafael: “A trick is boring/bad if no effort is put into it. If you’re just taking existing elements from two popular combos and putting them together, there’s no effort in creativity. If you come up with a new hold but can do nothing with it, there is no effort in construction.
Overusing the music metaphor again, if you’re just doing other people’s combos, you’re that dude with a guitar playing covers on the beach. People may enjoy it, even give you props for playing their favorite song, but when Tom Morello parks across the street you’ll be as good as dead. Good tricks and combos come from trick artists.”
Mikhail: “Never-ending combos. I attribute this to ‘contest yo-yoing.’ Yo-yos spin longer, and regens save time to get more points, but holy crap when a trick should obviously end at a trapeze, and they just regen out of it to regen out again it feels like a run-on sentence that should have clearly ended a while ago but it just didn’t and kept going because it could and it didn’t even use a comma to break up the thought and just started a whole new thought because it was easier to just keep going even though the statement was clearly over and came to a natural and fitting end but nah never mind let’s just keep going for a little bit because I can and then an abrupt. End.”
Spencer: “I don’t want to say that any tricks are bad, I think if someone came up with it and it brings them joy then it is a success.
If a trick or combo is boring it is probably having trouble distinguishing itself. With the abundance of tricks that exist now, it is very easy to create something that may be technically new, but has nothing fresh about it. Which is strange to say—because people make fresh tricks out of old holds, old moves, old tricks all the time—but there is also a lot of new tricks that don’t seem fresh because they don’t assert themselves to anything beyond a series of moves someone put together. Does that make any sense?”
Technical yo-yoing may rightly be regarded as one of the most unapproachable styles, but persistent practice and mindful trick design can also make it one of the most impressive. This is by no means a complete summary of the wide world of tech, but hopefully is enough to inspire you to try some kink mounts.
David Ung drops a Terra YoYo Tutorial for his trick “Bungee Jumping” in the latest video in their tutorial series. David is one of the most unsung creative minds in yoyoing today…expect to see him all over the #trickcircle posts, and feel free to dig in to his 365yoyotricks.com catalog.
Yoyo used is the YoYoFactory Shutter.
Happy Thanksgiving! YoYoFactory decided to reward our sloth with a new video from some of their top players enjoying a day at the pier, and throwing down an absolutely stunning array of tricks. Featuring Tyler Severance, Patrick Borgerding, Clint Armstrong, David Ung, and Paolo Bueno.
It didn’t take long after the launch of Instagram video for yo-yo players around the world to start sharing their tricks in ≤15-second bursts. The hashtag #trickcircle started popping up, and there have been over a hundred yoyo tricks posted under that label in the past three months. We here at @YoyoNews have been monitoring that tag closely, and are now endeavoring to bring you the choicest morsels of instagoodness every week with a #trickcircle roundup. Want your 15 seconds of fame? Study these well, and start shooting…
This trick from @yoyoingadam (AKA Adam Brewster of CLYW) is called “Kefka’s Tower”, intended to be part of his Final Fantasy series showcased in “Eleven” but left off until “The Only Thing Worth Saying”. Adam’s always had a gift for creating (& naming) new elements, and the central feature of this one is something he calls a Portal. In his words: “A brother to the folding gate concept: with a ‘portal’ the yoyo breaks plane as it’s pushed through a gap in the mount, instead of remaining stationary while the mount folds over it as with a gate trick.” Gates (folding the string formation over/under a yoyo) are a relatively underused triangle entrance, and the pushiness of the portal gives the concept new energy. A frontstyle combo was the natural choice for the best view of the off-plane movement, and Adam ties the rest of the moves together nicely.
@werrdtranton (AKA Eric Tranton of Werrd) brings us a short & sweet sequence blending some recent favorites. He opens with a regen popularized in Gentry Stein’s winning US Nats 2013 freestyle: a bind caught in the off-hand, which is then tossed up and regenerated into… well, for Gentry it was a split-bottom mount, but where Eric really ups the ante is landing in a four-point star. This one might be hard to learn without slomo, but the concept is definitely one worth exploring, and maybe if you study some Ryosuke Iwasawa videos you’ll come around to your own variation.
@raygstl (AKA Ray Godefroid, AKA Baby Bear Treezy) takes us into the future with a 3D 5A trick that reminds me of a cross between Red’s double pinwheel sequences and the Red Rocket spintop trick. The root concept of the trick—up/down off-plane 3D pinwheels—is more than cool enough on its own, but there are some subtleties and that imply a lot of room for growth. My personal favorite part of the trick actually lies at the very beginning, as Ray uses a smooth & subtle rejection to enter the trick, which builds the proper amount of momentum while simultaneously creating a tantalizing bit of slack just begging to be incorporated in a tech combo. Ray naturally ends the combo with a bucket, the traditional endpoint for tricks with horizontal dice movement.
Let’s take a quick trip across the Pacific for a monster of a trick from @sakatuca, AKA Tsukasa Takatsu of One Drop. He’s been making jaws drop this year with his dense, intricate chopsticks tricks, merging a Japanese sense of trick economy with the technical sensibilities of Mark Montgomery and Sid Seed. As you can see in this clip, though, Tsukasa is much more than just a fusion of his influences and has fresh ideas to spare: the opening mount alone should be enough to keep you busy for the week, a herculean magic drop/chopsticks/bucket conglomeration that looks borderline impossible on a fullsize yoyo. In addition to being mindnumbingly difficult, this mount sets up a sequence of visually stunning slacks that form the backbone of the trick. The strongest impression I took away from this trick is the way a well-placed slack manipulation can break up the pace of a combo and raise the impact of the other elements.
We’ll wrap this week up with a trick from YoyoNews favorite @david0ung, AKA David Ung of Yoyofactory. This combo is a takeoff of a lesser known Spencer Berry trick, Inhale, a sister trick to his masterwork Breath, first seen in Debt in Knowledge. Inhale works off of the idea of setting up a hanging potential GT knot halfway down the string, something played with by luminaries like Kohta, and then resolves the snag by swinging the yoyo through. David applies his own spin to the concept at every stage of the trick, from setting up the knot with a GT chopsticks slack to resolving with a risky triangle suicide. The best part of the trick, though, may be how much restraint is used: both David and Spencer let the elements speak for themselves, using subtle mounts that invite the viewer to really study what’s happening instead of getting caught up in flash or needless technical flourishes. Also, did we mention that this trick is hard? It’s so freakin’ hard.
Tune in next week, and don’t forget to follow @YoyoNews on Instagram and tag your insta-clips with #trickcircle for a chance to be featured!
