Spintastics diabolo team and MoYo present “spinulation and spinulacrum”

[csephiroth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tl3ujLimLU

Here is my latest video featuring diabolo tricks heavily inspired by yoyo concepts including string rejection, electric fan, laceration, green triangle, eli hops, hobie cats, boingy boing, and cross arm mounts as well as classic diabolo concepts.

Front page material? I sure hope so haha

-Peace

[Martijn]

Inspiring!

[William]

I loved it. Some cool tricks. The only thing I didn't think was some of the camera work. Try and find an angle (and possibly tripod) you can use to fit everything in. Instead of trying to move around to fit everything in.

[nev]

cool stuff - cant help thinking that yoyo players are going to change diabolo forever in the coming years

[stlmoyo]

What is a diabolo?

[thetemple94]

What is a diabolo?

That's not even funny.

[Sottle]

Ok, sorry to be the downer but i really don't think anything here is particularly yoyo related, or for that matter, new (only adding that because it seems to be being presented as something new, i'm aware there's nothing wrong with retreading old concepts, especially with diabolo).

Starting with the list of tricks you claim to be adapting, string rejections? I didn't see any, i honestly might have missed some, so i'll wait before passing judgement on that one. Electric Fan? E-fan has had an existing diabolo equivalent ever since people started letting go of the stick and twirling it around, the only way i can see an e-fan adapted legitimately to diabolo would be one of those awful "tricks" where the stick is isolated and spun with one hand and you do some simple repetition trick with the diabolo using the other. Since nothing like that was in your video i can only assume your taking every instance of letting the stick go as being e-fan inspired?

Lacerations? I guess you're referring to the Paul Han-ish trick where youy flipping slack about and stopping the motion/changing direction with your leg/arm etc. Ok, whilst that's the trick in the video that probably comes closes to relating to what it's supposed to. It's a pretty pointless trick on a diabolo, with a yoyo when you do that trick your having to fight the force of the yoyo wanting to succomb to gravity, so every change of direction that requires a different pinch or change of grip requires some delicacy and timing to prevent the loss of momentum, with a diabolo, there's none of that since the diabolo is mounted. What your doing is the equivalent of going to Houdini drop, dropping the loop on your thumb and then flipping that back and forth a few times, which isn't a good trick at all. So it certainly also isn't a good trick when you have string that moves through the air better and a larger target at the end. I think there is legit untapped potential in diabalo with real lacerations, i.e tricks where the string is whipped around the axel forms a loop and is caught either on stick/finger/thumb whatever, simply because the weight of diabolo string makes it easier to get that sort of string movement.

Green Triangle, yeah ok, it was there, but that's an existing mount that i'm sure a lot of diabolo players already know about. (correct me if i'm wrong, i have less than zero concept of what the community at large knows and doesn't know, but it certainly seems like an obvious enough concept)

Eli Hops, Really? Eli Hops? Lets take a look at what an Eli Hop is, bouncing the yoyo into the air from a trapeze and catching it again, don't you think diabolo players are doing that already? It's like the most simple concept in the world. Not to mention the whole purpose of an eli hop (back in the days of responsive yoyos) was to have the skill to do it without the yoyo snagging. Wrapping a diabolo in a trapeze and doing an "eli hop" is the definition of a nothing trick for me, it's not going to snag, the diabolo isn't on open string so there's no risk involved, and it's nearly impossible to miss because the target is so god damn wide. So my question is why?

Hobie Cats. Hah. Boing-e-Boing, again do you not think this is too simple concept to claim that one side is influence by the other? You trap the spinning object in a mount and you bounce it back and forth. Maybe if you found a diabolo equivalent of boing-e-boing second gen, that would be freaking cool. Crossed arm mounts? Diabolo players don't cross their arms?

Even yoyo influence aside this really doesn't come across like a good video, the diabolo is out of shot in almost all the tricks, a lot of tricks look like they lack purpose, almost like you're making them up as you go along, the lighting isn't brilliant, some of the effects and cuts seem to miss the part of the music you're trying to hit, i would hope it takes a video of greater quality to make front page material.

I guess you might be thinking where i get off telling you what your own tricks are inspired by, and you'd probably be right, but it seems to me that you're getting away with poor video production, ugly looking tricks and very easy tricks based on the idea that it's somehow yoyo inspired, maybe people on this forum just don't see any yoyoers playing with diabolos and think this the gold standard or something, but i can tell you that i saw Brian Cosky play with a diabolo for less than an hour at IYYO and he was already doing stuff that was legitimately "newer" and more "yoyo inspired" than this.

I don't want to detract you from doing what your doing, more yoyoers picking up diabolos is probably a good thing. But i was surprised to see your list of influences at the end of the video, people like Yuuki and John Ando are doing exactly the opposite to what you're doing, they're trying to push things forward constantly, at the moment you're taking a step back. You're using "yoyo concepts" to do tricks that aren't new and are actually less difficult and less interesting than the ones you're copying in yoyoing and the existing counterparts in diabolo play. Compare that to Langley, his style is more technical than anything out there in 1d that i've ever seen, plus it's not just stuff directly stolen from yoyoing, it's legitimately inspired, he's taken a yoyo concept and found the BEST way to apply it to diabolo not just the easiest and quickest. He recognises that the two are not one and the same and that a trick on one does not necessarily make a trick on the other. That might be something to think about.

Also how long have you been on Spintastics? Congrats dude, also do you have any yoyo videos? I've never actually seen you play.

[csephiroth]

thanks for the advice

[stupendous]

YES!!  It is so good to see your stuff on video.  Great job!

-stu

[Martijn]

I'm sorry to say I haven't read your entire post Sottle (mainly because I don't understand all the yo-yo terms), but I wanted to reply to what I get from the first few paragraphs.

I disagree Although you are probably right, I don't think it's to take apart the entire video, telling him all of his tricks are rubbish. I think it's great to enter the diabolo game from a yo-yo perspective. I applaud keeping away from trying to do the same thing everybody else does (go to any popular diabolo website for beginners and learn the basic tricks). Instead, learn the prop by using the experience you have with an other prop (in this case yo-yo). Most diabolists (or at least me) only pick up on these next level tricks after doing the same stuff over and over again. I think it's quite great what MoYo shows us here. A different perspective, concept crossover exploring and style is what makes this video interesting. Having a yo-yo background, the tricks in the video might look boring or old, but you have to realise that this yo-yo crossover thing it's quite new in diabolo, or at least only gained popularity during the last year or so.

Therefore, I found it inspiring. edit: ok - the video angles were quite bad.

[stlmoyo]

I'm sorry to say I haven't read your entire post Sottle (mainly because I don't understand all the yo-yo terms), but I wanted to reply to what I get from the first few paragraphs.

I disagree Although you are probably right, I don't think it's to take apart the entire video, telling him all of his tricks are rubbish. I think it's great to enter the diabolo game from a yo-yo perspective. I applaud keeping away from trying to do the same thing everybody else does (go to any popular diabolo website for beginners and learn the basic tricks). Instead, learn the prop by using the experience you have with an other prop (in this case yo-yo). Most diabolists (or at least me) only pick up on these next level tricks after doing the same stuff over and over again. I think it's quite great what MoYo shows us here. A different perspective, concept crossover exploring and style is what makes this video interesting. Having a yo-yo background, the tricks in the video might look boring or old, but you have to realise that this yo-yo crossover thing it's quite new in diabolo, or at least only gained popularity during the last year or so.

Therefore, I found it inspiring. edit: ok - the video angles were quite bad.

I totally agree what this video lacks it makes up for in style and personality. Shane doesn't really yoyo, I know when he is at the MoYo meets he comes to diabolo. It is fun to see Shane make stuff up on the spot based on who he is surrounded by. 

[Ceri-Anne]

Loved the "who doesn't love chocolate" shot at 0:37! 

I don't know anything about yoyo, but I did see some moves that I hadn't thought of before and that I might try.

[peterp205]

i got one word for that "smooth" loved every min of it sum vids altho reli gd tricks get bored cos not intrestin but this reli was intrestin :D

Edit Sean - for our non-native-English speakers let me translate:
I got one word for that: "smooth". Loved every minute of it. Some videos, although having really good tricks, get boring because they are not interesting, but this really was interesting.

peace out peterp205

[fasilevi]

really nice tricks in there! i don't know anything about yoyo, maybe thats why i liked it so much, pretty good editing and music, didn't like the camera angles though. 

Compare that to Langley, his style is more technical than anything out there in 1d that i've ever seen, plus it's not just stuff directly stolen from yoyoing, it's legitimately inspired, he's taken a yoyo concept and found the BEST way to apply it to diabolo not just the easiest and quickest. He recognises that the two are not one and the same and that a trick on one does not necessarily make a trick on the other. That might be something to think about.

what's the point of comparing him to other people dude, just because you like langerz you don't have to be harsh, i dont think it was easy for him to make this video plus langerz has been playing quite a long time with this style.

 "but it seems to me that you're getting away with poor video production, ugly looking tricks and very easy tricks based on the idea that it's somehow yoyo inspired"
 
 and come on, that's definetly not constructive criticism.

[Sottle]

It's pretty easy to decide someone's not being constructive by pulling out individual parts of what they're saying and not treating the post as a whole.

i don't know anything

See

Yes, the post might have been harsh, but that's how i am. I choose not to sugar coat things, it's generally a stance people choose to take more offence to online then if i talk to them in person. However, if you read the post as a whole (and i can't believe people are trying to accuse me of things whilst openly admitting they didn't) you'll see that the underlying purpose there is to help him evolve this style more. I love yoyoing and i'm passionate about attempting to push it forward, if that also branches out into diabolo, then great, we've already taken enough influence from you guys anyway. But what i don't want to see, is all the bad parts of yoyoing crossing over and infecting diabolo play just because it's "new".

If my post got a reaction from Shane in any way, good, maybe it'll motivate him to make a ridiculous video and shut me up. And i'll be glad to eat my words, because skilltoys as a whole will be the winner.