For Sabuda, it's high-concept trial and error. Some paper engineers
use mathematical equations to guide them in the early stages. Not
Sabuda. Equations don't take into account factors like differing
weights and thicknesses of paper and even what he calls "wind
resistance" - a floppy piece of paper won't fold down at the same
rate as a stiffer piece.
"We really are flying by the seat of our pants," he says.
For the Tyrannosaurus rex page in Dinosaurs, Sabuda pictured a
monstrous mouth opening and closing, "because he's a fearsome
creature, and we wanted to portray that."
So Sabuda began cutting and folding shapes, seeing how they moved.
The first attempt was small, just the basic movement of the jaws
fabricated in a few minutes in his studio on Manhattan's Upper West
Side. Then the refinements began. They made sure it was
anatomically correct. They made it bigger, until it was too big.
Then smaller. Eight versions and weeks later, they were
satisfied.
Sabuda's success allows him to have a small staff of two designers
and two interns in the studio he shares with Reinhart. "There are
times we'll all be huddled around something," he says. "It's almost
like an operation. 'What's wrong with this patient? Why can't we
get this to work?' Or it worked once and now it doesn't work
anymore, and we're trying to figure out what went wrong."
With the T. rex, they decided they wanted more movement, so they
used string to make T. rex's
head and horns pop, a technique they'd
not tried before.
"That just shows we never feel bound by any restrictions or
limitations, not only in the type of work we do, but the materials
we use," Sabuda says. "If we find something that will help us with
a solution, we'll use it, no matter what it is."