From John Taylor...

Suspended Animation was designed and documented in 1998 and first created and built early 2000 for my touring show in Japan. It was then, shortly after, released and sold to the magic community through Bill Smith - Magic Ventures and first appeared in MAGIC Magazine in the year 2000.

This spectacular illusion never seems to disappoint an audience as it’s an unexpected exchange using principles in magic that have never been seen before like my totally original cloth handling technique © , which is a very important ingredient to the illusion. This along with a combination of innovative ideas helps to contribute to the effect and thus creating the most visually exciting and practical variation of the Metamorphosis illusion ever created!

The first Suspended Animation was beautifully built by Chris Murphy - Oz Illusions in Australia. A collaboration between designer and builder with myself and Chris working tirelessly in the workshop every day to design and create my dream illusion and make it a magical reality.

My main goal with Suspended Animation was to create “the ultimate illusion”. An illusion that would incorporate the best of both worlds from both a builders and working pro’s perspective, making Suspended Animation not only the perfect illusion to perform resulting in a killer reaction, but also setting new standards in illusion building, construction and assembly - a prop that can be put together with ease and no messy bolts in just 5 minutes flat!

Chris Murphy did an outstanding job on the technical design of the prop by working alongside me for many months and ever striving to meet my high expectations in building and staging requirements to produce this super illusion.

Since Chris built the first Suspended Animation for me I have owned 3 other Suspended Animations built by Bill Smith - Magic Ventures so I'm currently on my 4th generation SA design. With each prop I have changed many of the details and dimensions and perfected the illusion and cloths to make it the very best it can be! The illusion is taller, stronger and offers many design features to improve the exchange. We have also designed a new interchangeable base system to give buyer a choice of a tall SA or the original design. Pictures are unavailable of the tall SA to protect it from rip offs, only buyers putting down a deposit are able to see pictures and decide if they would like to invest in the taller version. (Extra cost applies for the tall model)
But to be perfectly honest with you I would say after performing with them both the original size SA (which is now taller anyway) is pretty hard to beat. I can't say why here but I have my reasons. But the tall one does look very impressive.

Due to demand for the illusion I would like to introduce a new Suspended Animation builder to the team: Willie Kennedy. This now makes Bill Smith & Willie Kennedy the only official builders in the world of Suspended Animation. Willie's an outstanding builder known for his brilliant metal work and outstanding illusion designs. I'm honored to have Willie building SA and look forward to seeing what his creative genius also brings to Suspended Animation!