This combo was created with aim of using the 8 main powerpasses with different modifiers for each of them.
In WT17 R2, my combo used 8 powerpasses but with very poor integration and no modifiers.
As such, WT19 R2 represents an advance in the way I consider spinning and combo construction, with increased appreciation of density, integration and visual effect.
Outlined below are the links and modifiers for each of the powerpasses:
0:01 - 0:04
1. pinky fxxk - angled pp - pp done in same plane of rotation as fxxk 2. ia rev ~ fl ma rev 1.0 - around rev 1.0 concept used with pp rev - credits to key3 for around rev 1.0 method 3. ring pushed ss 1.0 - fl pa - mid ring pp with +0.5 rotation on first push
0:04 - 0:08
4. inv mirrored pp rev pinky-ring 34-23 - inv mirrored pp (no additional modification) 5. inv side flush sonic 14-23 ~ palm down mirrored pp 23-T1 - mirrored pp, but palm down
0:08 - 0:11
6. pd ta ~ pd fl ta ~ thumb inv pp T3-T4 - thumb-pushed inverse powerpass - credits to taeko for t-powerpass concept 7. raimo bak to 24 ~ inv side sonic 24-14 ~ ra rev 14 ~> fl ia rev to T1 - powerpass rev on ring and index (skips middle), initial force from push by 14 slot 8. palm down mirrored pp rev T2-2-3 - pd fl ta catch - mirrored pp rev, but palm down - applied as fl/power mechanics*
- this trick requires the ring finger to hit the pen during its rotation, which makes it a lot harder than palm down around 1.5
- hard to appreciate in normal speed, so here is a clip in 120 fps x 0.5 (i.e. slowed to 1/8th of normal speed)
But it's barely 10 seconds?!! The combo has basically zero filler or breaks, and is done at consistent tempo. Main personal criticism is the excess hand movement at start, otherwise I am largely satisfied with this being a reasonable draft. Condensing material with consistent difficulty, removing filler segments and even most filler slots (i.e. attempting to have every transition be a useful hybrid) is far harder to sustain than longer, less dense combos.
This combo is harder than WT19 R1 and harder than my SCT18 R4, which was considerably harder than any of my WT17 videos. Of course, I still have material and capacity saved for future rounds.
Hoping I will pass, best of luck to other participants!
*I am aware pd mirr pp rev has been done with varying cleanness by at least 3 other spinners. As far as I know, this is the first performance of it done as an fl trick (i.e. not caught immediately in a basic slot), and with acceptable technique and plane of rotation If you have downloaded the clip with the link provided on youtube, you can play it frame by frame and see that the pen does correctly hit ring finger. You can also use the 120 fps slomo above.
Hello everyone, it's been a over a year since I last posted here.
The 2p2h concepts I'll outline in this post are largely paraphrased from what I remember about a post Zombo made back in UPSB V3 era (2007-2010 or earlier). As far as I know, there have only been several short clips or brief applications of these ideas in the past by s777, eriror and tmrw; but not really any complete combos that use varying degrees of synchrony.
Synchrony: happening at same time.
I'm still not sure about what the difference in asynchrony or desynchrony is, so I will be using 'asynchrony' to represent opposite of synchrony (i.e. different things happening).
As inspired by musical theory, there can be varying degrees of discordance (i.e. difference in effect) in what each hand does.
i. The most basic 2p2h is perfect synchrony (no discordance) - where each hand does the same tricks at the same time. This is fairly boring and quite simple, but it can be expanded with transfers like below at 0:27:
ii. Slight discordance - same palm orientation, similar tricks in same slots with slight variation (e.g. doing inverse sonic 34-23 in right hand and sonic 34-23 in left hand). I made a combo with this concept in 10 year solo at 1:31
iii. Moderate discordance - different palm orientation, similar tricks (e.g. doing sonic 34-23 in right hand with palm up, and sonic 34-23 in left hand with palm down). I made a combo with this concept in PSO18 2 hands R1.
iv. Above moderate discordance - different palm orientations, different tricks but with similar changes in motion (e.g. having right hand go from palm down to palm up, and left hand go from palm up to palm down). I made a combo with this concept in 10 year solo at 0:43, tmrw's WC14 qualification combo also applies this.
v. High discordance - different palm orientations, different tricks, different changes in motion and pen spinning in different planes of rotation. This is probably the hardest form of 2p2h (assuming other factors are equal), and most difficult to achieve a cohesive effect with.
In my WT19 R1 combo, 0:01-0:03 has moderate discordance, 0:04-0:07 mainly has slight discordance; 0:08-0:13 has above moderate and high discordance.
It is tempting to consider 2p2h in terms of what each hand does separately, but this is just an initial consideration. Proper depth of 2p2h lies in understanding how the parts fit together.
Besides the consideration of structure, a 2p2h combo is far more difficult than its separate parts. If the breakdown for the right hand part can be done once every 1 minute (1 in 20 success rate) and the left hand part is once every 2 minutes (1 in 40 success rate), then the chance of doing the parts successfully one after the other is 1/20 x 1/40 = 1/800 (once every 2400 seconds = once every 40 minutes). However, it is more difficult to do the breakdowns at the same time, so the difficulty is even higher.
I also put some basic fingercross with left hand at 0:06 and 0:12, but it's just a minor addition to the overall picture.
I have very high respect for Zombo for documenting these theories so long ago, and I thank all pioneers of 2h concepts for giving me inspiration.
Looking forward to seeing people explore 2p2h more in the future! 2p2h does not usually do well in WT, so I hope I can pass to next round.
After half a year of filming and practice, it's finally out! I'd planned to make 10 year something special in 2016 December, so it's been developing for a long time.
Usual abbreviations: mirr pp rev = mirrored powerpass reverse, fl = fingerless, PD = palm down, PV = palm vertical, ia = indexaround (ma for middle, ra for ring, pa for pinky) etc, RH = right hand, LH = left hand, fc = fingercross etc.
In order:
Mirr pp rev power RH and PD fl ia LH: In 2016, fel2fram asked me to put PD fl around in fl sequence. Besides learning the tricks on each hand separately, the transitions are hard since the tricks have different plane of rotation. .
Arm bounce x 5: Used x 1 in WT17 R4, took 10 min experimenting then 30 min filming to get x 5. Difficulty rises steeply after x 6...
1st grid: PD fl arounds x 10 (ring, thumb, index), thumb clip is from early 2016, index from late 2017, and ring from early 2018. I'll show real record of PD fl ia later.
2nd grid: index fxxk and curled index bust x 10, PD fl ma and curled mid spread x 12.
1p2h combo: some ideas from OhYeah, and different variations of my WT17 R5 and R6 material. Became pretty consistent at this combo, filmed over 2 dozen times with second filming session having 14 drafts in 40 minutes - main issue was pacing.
['inverse' mirr pp rev - pun kan] cont: only rank A+, but it looks cool so I included it. I want to use this pp in different ways soon.
Async 2p2h: 2p2h with mirrored effect. Because 'chance of not dropping' is squared in 2p2h (e.g. success rate of 1/5 on each hand becomes 1/25). and you have to retrain stuff you already learnt, async 2p2h is way tougher than just the separate breakdowns. Trained this daily for about a week, so I think far better 2p2h combos are possible.
pinky fxxk - basketball spin: You tell me 'but pinky fxxk and basketball spin have different angles, how is that possible?' Well, fuck logic, PS is about bashing head against brick wall until wall breaks. Despite saying this, this took only 30-40 min to learn and film, but it's a pretty surprising transition so I wanted to show it.
pun kan aerial - wrist (?) spin: Pun kan pop spin variation perhaps. Not much to say other than 'I want to do it in cont some day'.
Forward to reverse combo: Was reminded of this concept by Ennis' WT17 R3. Timing was hard to adjust since I had to deliberately do some tricks faster, but it turned out pretty well. Filmed this for 1 1/2 hour for many drafts, on first day I made error in reversing the breakdown which confused me when timing was always off .-. Recorded on December 14 2017 shortly after WT ended - oldest clip in this solo.
PD fl around fall-rise-fall: Not much to say other than 'really hard' and 'I will make these tricks spin less diagonally in future'.
DC comssa fl: Inkless, tipless, gripless as usual. The cheat aerial is a bit big, but lazy to refilm (clip from 2017 November before I developed better technique for mirr pp rev stuff).
'Sync effect' 2p2h async: 2p2h with visually similar variations - inspired by Zombo's old async 2p2h wiki article.
RH parts: inv sonic 34-24, index-pushed RA rev 13-23, midbak to 24 > PD ma, pp rev 23-12-T1, pass rev (under mid, over ring) T1-34, sonic (over ring) 34-T1, PD fl ta rev T1-T2.
LH parts: sonic 34-24, thumb-pushed RA rev T3-23, midbak to 23 > PD ma, mirr pp 23-12-T1, pass rev T1-34, sonic (over ring and middle) 34-T1, PD fl ta rev T1-23.
2p1h fl idea: Pen first held in T1, then shifted to 23 quickly while main mod is in air.
3rd grid: aerial minicombos of PD fl ta, curled index bust, index fxxk, and PD fl ma. It'd be a lot harder to do PD fl around aerial with pen spinning completely horizontal, maybe later...
2p1h combo: Using ideas from gollumsk8 and fizz. Really hard to control, I want to see 2p1h developed further but I can understand why hardly anyone does it.
2p2h + 1p2h fl: Overall the hardest clip in solo. RH: mirr pp rev - pinky pop, LH: fc square pass fc aerial (the aerial is pushed by crossing middle and ring, then goes right into another fingercross); followed by LH fc21 tpass rev 124. Rank SS followed by rank S+, trained the not-aerial version of the 2p2h for 1 1/2 weeks, then the aerial version for 1 1/2 weeks, and the 1p2h transition for a few days, minor miracle to land this clip in only 30 minutes...expected it'd take hours.
RH combo: You can fit a lot into 9.5 seconds (RESPECT?). The linkage with indexspin, curled indexmid bust > thumb-mid cross sonic T3-12 > sonic rev 12-34-T4 was from adding my touch to mesi and dary's material, but their execution is worlds above mine. Thumb-mid cross PD around > thumb-mid cross pinky fxxk > thumb-index cross inv tpass rev from adjusting my WT material. Had really good day filming this, was landing it once every 70-90 seconds consistently...
Rev minicombo: Fxxk - ss rev (too noob to use in 9 year solo), PU fl pa rev - ss rev, and bakriser - arm bounce - fist ss rev. Rev fl has a lot more stuff possible, it's not developed much.
1p2h combo 2: Start inspired by OhYeah's WT17 R2 ending, applied to square pass (not that hard). Fc23 around LH + 1p2h twirls RH inspired by OhYeah and Sirapob, next bit is 1p2h twirls both hands PD using RH index + LH ring and mid inspired by katts WT17 R3 starter; PD to PV transition inspired by something Kay did in 2013-2014, 2h pass variations from OhYeah's stuff again. Fc21 LH to bust RH for ending, should've made it more obvious. Took months of practice to train this combo, way harder than the 1p2h combo near beginning.
LH fc combo: Ideas from zarne and scream, pacing of fc is hard.
1p2h twirl aerial fall-rise: rank S sequence for 1p2h. Daily training for a year to get not-aerial fall-rise one in my WT17 R6, then a bit more practice to put aerials on every part. Not as smooth as I want.
mirr pp rev pinky ss +0.5 spin pinky ss + wrist bounce: making it into 'real spiderspin' is ridiculously hard, the 2nd one actually isn't done properly but I didn't want to delay release any more. I'll start training this trick seriously now.
1p2h combo 3: Not much to say, just making a powerful impression of 1p2h with fc23 on LH, pd fl around on RH. Ending is really annoying with left arm bounce.
RH combo 2: Some ideas from f2f and dary. Start idea from coffeelucky's PU - PD sonic stuff but applied to fxxk, breakdown is: pinky fxxk ~ devil's shadow to 14 (mid in ring out) > ia 14-13 > pass rev 13-23 + fingerswitch thumb-mid cross 23-T3. Also tried doing b1b2 fxxk variation, but pen leaves hand too much. Moonwalk sonic ~> mid ring mirr pp rev > thumb-index cross fl TIA to T4 > T4 charge + fingerswitch to thumb-ring cross > PU fl ra ~ fl TIS rev.
Mirr pp rev power RH + LH indexspin rev 2.0: Under 3 seconds, hardest individual fl sequence I ever filmed by far. Over 3 hours spread out on 3 days to get this clip (I was trying easier variation with LH basketball spin-ish trick a month before going for this clip, and it felt like I was trying to hit bullseye on dartboard in a dark room without knowing which direction walls were). Indexspin rev with index angled upwards is way harder than basketball spin. Doing this clip again would be tougher than refilming all of my WT17 combos in total, I give it a high rank SS+. if I ever do this in cont I can quit happily hah.
Decent numbers of PD fl pa, mirr pp rev pinky ss, mirr pp rev - pinky pop: I've filmed PD fl pa x 8 and mirr pp rev pinky ss x 17, but they weren't as clean as these clips. Good way to conclude anyway.
Random thoughts:
Well, finishing major project that begun 1 1/2 years ago and involved more practice+filming than WT17 feels a bit strange, as though part of brain is suddenly unoccupied. Don't worry, I have some cool stuff planned later, and I'm starting to orient my practice towards making combos for WT19.
I hope this solo will leave a lasting impression on your hearts and minds, and inspire you that there's always more things possible. A lot of people say 'there's nothing left to do in PS', 'PS is dying', 'PS has reached its peak already' and stuff like that - I want to show them that limits of human skill still have much further to expand in this amazing artform.
tl;dr - Difficulty rises exponentially, so rank SS is incomparably harder than rank S, same for rank S to rank A, see first 4 videos of this playlist.
There's a many fl variations so I made letter rankings to explain difficulty to other spinners. Estimates comparing different tricks listed later (based on my own experience).
Pen spinning is hard, because doing a combo of multiple links/tricks generally has difficulty rising exponentially, i.e. combo of link A > link B > link C with 1/3 chance of doing each link, chance of completing is (1/3)^3 = 1/27. It's also why you need many drafts to get decent execution.
In first learning cont, chance of
progressing to next one (going from bust x 3 to bust x 4) is low, maybe 1/10 or worse. For someone who can do 10 busts,
the difference in bust x 5 and x 9 is big. As you get
better, this chance improves, so the difficulty rise becomes more linear (someone who can do bust x 200+ finds bust x 20
and bust x 40 easy), because chance of doing next bust
successfully is high.
Trick
difficulty is related to how many 'points of failure' that can occur when doing the trick. For bust
and spread, there is one motion/point that can lead to
failure, and that point has big margin of error. Fl ia ss, fl ma ring ss still only have
one point, but that point has smaller margin of error. Mirr pp rev pinky ss has 3 or 4 points of failure, each of which has very small margin of error.
There's time when I felt trick getting from 'exponential' to 'linear' chance as I improved. For tricks with one point of failure (bust or even a harder trick like fl ma ring ss), that happened around x 10-12, so doubling from x 12 to 20+ was a lot easier than doubling from x 5 to 10. For a hard trick with multiple points - mirr pp rev pinky ss I've raised to x 17, I still don't feel this.
So, in comparing trick which keeps rising exponentially with one that has become linear, the exponentially rising one is incomparably harder at higher numbers. Mirr pp rev pinky ss x 5 is comparable to fl ma ring ss x 30 in difficulty, so mirr pp rev pinky ss x 15 is comparable to fl ma ring x 70-100, right? This isn't true because mirr pp rev pinky ss rises as exponential from 5 to 10 and 10 to 15, whereas fl ma ring ss rises linearly after x 30-40.
Roughly: fl ma ring ss x 5 similar to fl ia ss x 15-20, fl ma ring ss x 10-15 similar to fl ia ss x 50-70.
Rank A fl ma ring ss: decent spinner with foundation in fl trains daily 30-60 min for 6-12 months can expect to get about x 10. Rank S mirr pp rev pinky ss x 5 is comparable to fl ma ring ss x 25-35.
Rank SS: difficulty of mirr pp rev pinky ss x 10 (x 9 to 13) in sequence of < 3 seconds (2 or 3 tricks). Rank S+ is fair bit harder than S but not quite SS, so it's quite variable. Logically, rank SS sequence of ~ 3 seconds makes fl ma ring ss into trash, because it has difficulty of 100+ fl ma ring ss in 3 seconds.
The benchmark rank SS is mirr pp rev pinky ss (+0.5 spin pinky ss), x 2 is harder than mirr pp rev pinky ss x 10, and x 3 is comparable to mirr pp rev pinky ss x 17-20.
SSS will have the difficulty of mirr pp rev pinky ss (+0.5 spin pinky ss) x 6-8 in 3 seconds. I'm not anywhere near this yet, but I hope that in future, I can use rank SS as finishers, put multiple SS in one fl combo, reach rank SSS and higher, so I'll keep practising.
I'll probably discuss this stuff more later since it covers a lot of different ideas, but I'll start with my thoughts on material difficulty (in terms of how hard it is for the spinner doing the combo).
I'll discuss more about WT meta in some other posts, but remember this for now - execution, difficulty and originality are worth same points, so there's no real reason prioritise any criteria over others.
Anyway, from conversations I've had with experienced WT/WC participants in past, there seems to be a lot of last-minute filming (10 hours or more) on night before deadline, to land breakdown that needs stars to align to be performed. Naturally, this leads to frustration, physical strain on hand, and often compromises execution. Also, since material was prepared and trained for a short time only, there's recycling.
Basically, this last-minute 10 hour filming is detrimental in every regard, and often makes spinners tired from competitions due to stress. So, I want to promote an alternative approach to making 'serious combo' (which is a pretty obvious and logical approach to take, but few people seem to do it), which is similar to what I used in WT17 - sample video below:
You could spend 10 hours on 1 night, but it's preferable to spend 1 hour each on 10 separate days spread out over 2-3 weeks, with breakdown planned a few weeks in advance with easier material. Each time you filmed and landed a few successful takes, upgrade the difficulty and/or originality a little bit (in 1 or 2 places in combo). This would keep breakdown at a manageable difficulty - i.e. you can land it once every 20-40 minutes. You can have 'ultimate hard breakdown' as final goal to reach, while starting with easier versions; or you may naturally think of harder variations to use as time goes on.
This gives several benefits:
More time to develop ideas and higher chance to get interesting ideas with different material
Better execution due to more drafts and more practice because brain uses sleep to integrate motor skill learning
Better idea of what combo's impression and visual effect of various linkages are, since you get to see more drafts done - which allows you to adjust accordingly
Less frustration from drops
Less pressure since you'd prepare earlier and know you have backup drafts to fall back on
Less RSI and strain issues
Assuming you'd get 2 or 3 drafts every filming session of ~ 1 hr each, you'll have 20-30 drafts of gradually improving breakdown/difficulty/execution over a 2-3 week period, which will have material developed over a longer period. In WT17 I found that 20 drafts wasn't enough to get level I wanted typically (usually needed 30 or so). Of course, this would require more discipline in regularly taking a short period out of each day to plan and record, even if the actual number of hours used is similar.
I'll probably discuss material distribution (in terms of how to arrange combos which give different impression for multiple rounds of competition) in future when I propose possible adjustments to WT criteria's wording.
I wanted to show a wider range of skills this time, and I think very few people expected me to use 1p2h or fingercross (fc). I filmed more drafts for this round than previous ones, still wish I could do it better. Setting up angle for 1p2h is hard, first person (headcam?) is probably better but not really practical for WT-grade breakdown since my head moves .-.
0:01 - 0:07 (slomo 0:26 - 0:38): flush sonic > fc21 IA rev, sonic 34-24 ~> thumb-pushed MA rev to 13, fc21 pass 12-23 (pen goes under index), fc23 ma ~> bust, square pass + fc23 inv tpass 123. I can't cross to usable level on right hand, so I trained fc on LH for quite a while. It's very fun doing stuff that I thought I'd never be able to do.
0:07 - 0:12 (slomo 0:39 - 0:48): inv side flush sonic + 0.5 rev spin on index PU to PD, kagami's +0.5 spin rev thing ~ pinky spread rev to LH. Could've made this part harder, but my consistency wasn't good enough.
0:12 - 0:15 (slomo 0:48 - 0:53): mirr raimo bak rev (interrupted start) 23-12 - is not a shadow. fl ma ring ss - fl ta ext - fl ma ring ss. Haven't used fl ta ext - fl ma ring ss in combo before, having hand go from PD to PU gives different effect to usual ss stuff that's always PU.
0:15 - 0:22 (slomo 0:53 - 1:09): demo vid above, powerpass - twirl rise T'3 - 1'2 - T'1. LH uses thumb, index, then thumb; RH uses ring, mid, then index. Not as smooth as I wanted, oh well. It's surprisingly hard trying to get consistent rotation speed as normal spinning for this part.
Next - some LH transfer > RH inv tpass rev index+pinky over thumb.
Ending - twirl rev rise 1'3 - 1'2 - 1'1. LH uses index, RH uses ring, mid, then index. Gives very different effect to the previous 1p2h twirl section. Followed by t-powerpass T1-T4.
My aim when making this combo was to show greater diversity of skill, especially in families of tricks I did not show before and that people did not expect. I feel diversity is important for WT, because it makes sense to pass someone who'll show interesting different stuff in next round over someone who'll just recycle similar stuff as before.
Previously, I intended to use R3's clip for R4, but things turned out differently. I didn't expect my R3 to score so well (thanks judges! I'm happy my efforts were appreciated). Anyway, I wanted to show some different type of material for this combo, which is critical for late rounds of WT.
Most subtle part - ending has [fl ia - index ss] x 3 (one-finger cont ss variation), and also hardest part of the combo - I'm still not sure how I managed to get this trick so cleanly for this draft, I prayed hard.
This combo is based around fingerslots 24 and uncommon variations of thumbcross (TC). As basic TC IA and MA rev are overused, I tried to find different harder ways to apply TC.
0:01 - 0:04 (slomo 0:27 - 0:32): square pass 'rev' aerial and wrist bounce. Was annoying to control the square pass 'rev' after the wrist bounce.
0:04 - 0:07 (slomo 0:32 - 0:39): pass behind thumb (thumb-index cross, easy, but fits linkage theme). PP rev ~ palmspin rev - mirr PP ~ palmspin rev continues 'rev power' effect. I wanted to transition to midraimobak instead of midbak, but wasn't consistent enough.
0:08 - 0:10 (slomo 0:39 - 0:44): slight slowdown between midbak and PD IMA ugh. I thought of refilming it, but any drafts with that part done better would probably have other parts worse. PD IMA to 24 (ring up) > pass rev 24-13 - annoying linkage. Continuing with 24 use, PD fl PA rev 24 (ring down) - 24 (ring up), with changing position of ring increasing difficulty and rarity a lot. Inv sonic 24 and thumb-index cross T4 wiper (the TC doesn't really do much for difficulty of the trick, but it fits into theme).
0:10 - 0:13 (slomo 0:44 - 0:51): TC linkage part - diagonal plane-ish around rev T4 thumb-index cross and T2 thumb-mid cross > thumb-mid cross pd TA ~ fl sonic rev to 14. Getting the transition between the second diagonal around rev and TC pd ta without fatal error and then to fl sonic rev took a lot more practice than I'd expected, I was training this part for past month or more daily (still not as good as I want). I tried doing this linkage with completely PD TC around rev, but I wasn't skilled enough.
0:13 - 0:16 (slomo 0:51 - 0:58): some pass variation with T4 on ring. T1 cross direction change after it, I wanted to do this part better too .-. Subtle thumb-mid cross after the sonic rev 12-23, doesn't add much difficulty but contributes to linkage theme.
0:17 - 0:23 (slomo 0:58 - 1:10): swuck > square pass ~ usual fl ta index ss - [fl ia index ss] x 3. While the usual fl ta index/mid/ring ss are not hard, changing one finger makes a huge difference, as my personal record for fl ta index ss is 97, whereas I struggle to get past 5 fl ia index ss. Thumb-mid cross aerial/spread-like trick with T4 to continue theme of TC use.
Compared to R3's 'hard trick' focus, this combo is more of based on linkages with difficulty spread throughout. The margin of error for fl ia index ss cont is really small, and doing it with decent technique was very hard for me (especially at end of combo without easy setup spam linkage before it).
I'd be happy if people picked up their mods and tried some of the 24 and TC linkages, and I'd have achieved my goal if spinners are inspired to experiment with different applications of existing ideas in their own combos.
