WHAT IT IS?
This is a prop that thousands of you use and have used over the years. Many consider it a classic of magic now. The web page for it is
http://www.axtell.com/mdb.html
HOW IT ALL STARTED
In 1979 when I was working full time as a Psych Tech at a mental hospital in California, I was a weekend performer. While I enjoyed my work, I was getting burned out by the intensity of it. Performing became my escape from all the agony of the job as you could imagine.
I took my lunch breaks in my car and sat under a weeping willow tree. Somehow it reminded me of my childhood in Ohio. That hour was my favorite time of the day. I would sit there with a note book and a sack lunch under the cool breeze and invent stuff. What stuff? Toys and props of all kinds. I had about 100 concepts by then, about 1/3 of my collection now.
One day I was trying to find a creative way to combine my artistic skill and puppetry. I stumbled around for about a half hour drawing concepts of a puppet doing drawings of someone in the audience, then it hit me....draw the puppet and make it talk! But how??? I began drawing the mechanical guts of the Magic Drawing Board, but I was no engineer. I needed help.
It only took me 2 months to work out the prototype thanks to a great neighbor and prolific woodworker Sam, and the patience of a die cutter Bernie who is now retired. I learned many lessons about manufacturing. It takes a network of people to do anything complete. I was cutting my teeth here working on my people skills. What a blessing to have so many great friends.
CLEAN SLATE
The mechanics were built and working, but the face of the board was made from paper. The use of paper was a bummer because once you drew on it, you had to replace the paper before the next use. I wanted something that you could draw on and then wipe it off.
We began to experiment with wash off markers, but it was a mess, then it hit me - dry erase markers. But they only erased off of that special white plastic marker surface according to the manufacturers of the pens. However we needed something clear....something that we could put over the face of the product and become a writing surface that revealed the grid underneath....we did not want to write on the grid directly because of the secret gimmicks.
We tested everything with those pens and most plastic stained. Our house was a museum of little permanent black marks, and Plastic Supplies would put up CLOSED signs when they saw me coming with my marker. I tried everything they had to offer. Finally we found something that worked. Glass. It was fantastic but thick, heavy and not very safe for a performer to haul around in airports. It must be a plastic.
We only had a week before we were going to debut the board at a convention so we were really under pressure to come up with something. Finally we got a call from a creative salesperson at Cadillac plastics who went the distance for us. He asked us to send him a marker and he would go a trade show and "bag the elephant" which he did. He found a rare plastic that worked great called "Tri-acetate". The product was just what we needed.
OUT OF THE BAG
I finished it just in time to take it to my very first Ventriloquist Convention in KY. I was invited by my friend Mark Wade convention chairman. From the very first moment that we pulled it out of the bag and showed it to the first few people there, I was surrounded by hoards of ventriloquists and magicians wanting to buy it.
David Ginn, the famous magician, immediately wanted to buy the rights to it, which was tempting but I wanted it to launch our new company Axtell Expressions. This was my ticket of freedom.
MAKING MY MARK
We began taking orders and along with a few of our original puppets (The Storyteller, Gator, Eagle, Duck etc) Suzi my wife and I launched the company and moved to Ventura, California. I dropped to half time at the hospital and worked 12-15 hours a day making puppets and boards in our garage. Within a year we were full time and hiring help.
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
With thousands of boards being bought, we began to learn our customers likes and dislikes. We got great feedback from our customers - which is VERY IMPORTANT to me. This is why we have this forum. So, we began making small improvements and then in 1989 we brought in a great engineer Russ Robison to tighten the design. We re-released the new design as the PRO MAGIC DRAWING BOARD. This is still the design we sell today.
Over the years we've developed a list of requests by Magic Drawing Board customers. We will be making small ones, large ones, remote control ones, adding more moving features and more AxTrax routines in the years ahead.
Every year we hear that this prop has made MAJOR differences in the audience reaction to our customers' shows. I must say it's been a great product and now a "classic" in the world of magic. What a blessing!