Life Formations is one of Bowling Green’s better kept secrets.

The company is a multi-award winning art and technology studio dedicated to creating unique animatronic characters and dioramas, which are the life-like robots and scenes that can be seen at amusement parks and at sci-fi conventions.

Gene Poor, a professor at the University, formed the company in 1991 from the remnants of a smaller company called Good Displays, said Bret Woodbury, a producer at Life Formations and former student of Poor’s.

According to Life Formations’ CEO Rodney Heiligmann in a promotional video, “At the heart of anything we’re going to create is an original idea, newfound techniques and a desire to create something that’s never, ever been seen before. Take all the different ideas that everybody has, pull them all together and create this new entity that people are able to buy into.”

Life Formations has provided products for museums and amusement parks around the world. The company created a 20-foot dinosaur at Lotte World, a park in South Korea, which is one of Woodbury’s favorite creations, and several characters at the World of Disney store in downtown Disney World.

“For museums, we did the Lincoln Presidential Library Museum,” Woodbury said. “The list goes on and on.”

Life Formations has also done brand name work in the past, such as creating a life-like Colonel Sanders for the KFC Museum, as well as work for 7-Up and Campbell’s, Woodbury said.

But apart from name brands and amusement park work, Life Formations also works with private clients.

“Sometimes a client will call us and know exactly what they want,” Woodbury said. “Other times they’ll say, ‘We have this face, what kind of ideas can you come up with for us.’ That’s when we usually have our most fun developing some crazy idea that we can build.”

The process begins with stock heads that will either be customized or hand-molded, Woodbury said. The body will then be cut out of foam or fiberglass and then cast in silicone or fiberglass. After the body work is done, the model is taken to the back of the studio to the control room where the mechanics are inserted, he said.

In a room littered with advanced technology and robotic parts on counters and in various work-boxes, Justin Smith, a system project manager, is working on an interactive Put-Put hole.

“This is where we add technology to art,” he said. “We build all the control systems and add audio with them and also do preprogramming.”

“Everything we do is custom-made depending on what the client wants,” Smith said.

So why has Life Formations decided to stick around Bowling Green after so much success?

“It’s where the company was founded,” Woodbury said. “There’s really no reason to move. We can pull a lot of help from the University, from the art department; that’s been a really good resource for us. It’s kind of nice being out in the middle of the cornfields. The cost of living is low enough that we can compete a little better than people in L.A. or down in Orlando.”

Life Formations is working on a number of creations.

“We’re doing a project for a mall over in the Netherlands that’s a four piece band: a piano player, an accordianist and a bass player and a singer,” Woodbury said.

Life Formations is also working on 25 various animal creations for “Wildlife Experience,” a museum in Colorado, including an alligator and a panda bear.

Life Formations is located at 2029 Woodridge Blvd. in Bowling Green.