At LF Studios, a creative, three-dimensional studio, a group of visionaries and problem-solvers combine their technical expertise and creativity to create custom, engineered and immersive experiences that amaze, delight, and enhance guests’ experiences in any setting.
Having been a leader in performance animatronics and sculptural scenery for over three decades, the firm’s designs are informed by its successes and challenges. Its work appears around the world and at some of the most popular theme parks, museums and LBE venues. Its products range from animatronic figures of much-loved characters to fully immersive themed spaces.
Previously known as LifeFormations, the studio has recently built on its 33 years of experience in delivering animatronics and dimensional fabrications and has taken the next step in its evolution with a rebrand, a new website, and new additions to its leadership team.
To find out more about what this means for the company and its clients across the themed entertainment sector, blooloop speaks to LF Studios president, Rodney Heiligmann, alongside new hires (and industry veterans) Jay Rottinghaus, executive vice president of strategy and Ken Wiener, vice president of production.
The origin of LifeFormations
Gene Poor founded LifeFormations in 1990. Poor worked at an exhibit company, running a division creating unique projects for trade shows, explains Heiligmann:
“When Fortune 500 companies were exhibiting at trade shows and needed something cool to bring people into the booth, he would come up with simulations, interactive games and mechanical models.”
During that time, he created an animatronic Inspector Clouseau for Owens Corning, an American composite material company that had partnered with The Pink Panther to promote sales of PINK Fiberglass insulation in 1980.
“At that time, it was novel to have animatronics outside of a theme park. It was a huge hit. That company then started to create animatronics for a variety of customers. It became a big enough division that Gene spun it off and created his own company. He founded LifeFormations as a company that created cool experiences, primarily for exhibits, usually featuring animatronics.
“It was perfect timing for the animatronic revolution that happened in the nineties.”
The rise of animatronics
The firm soon found itself creating unique caricatures and custom IPs for small regional attractions and family entertainment centres.
“It was a magical time bringing so many fun (and wacky) characters to life,” says Heiligmann.
Two key things happened from the early 2000s through 2010. Firstly, while Disney and Universal continued their focus on IP-based animatronic figures, other regional parks began licensing IP from the studios. This greatly expanded the market for animatronics.
“IP-based characters based on movies became hugely important, and so there was a need for IP-based animatronics,” he adds. “We rode that wave and created a highly sophisticated digital sculpting studio that worked directly with the movie studios to help translate their IP into animatronics.”
Secondly, in 2010, LifeFormations purchased Fruland and Bowles. This was a reputable scenic fabrication shop with clients such as the National Park Service, ROTO, The Smithsonian Institute, Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, The Yellow Stone Park Foundation, the Studebaker National Museum, the Henry Ford Estate, Walt Disney/MGM Studios and more.
This accelerated the firm’s growth into scenic fabrication. It provided the opportunity to provide fully integrated and/or turn-key solutions (animatronics and surrounding scenic elements), such as the Jekyll & Hyde Club Restaurant and Bar on Times Square.
LF Studios: the new and evolving LifeFormations
Over the last 33 years, the firm has delivered projects in more than 25 countries. This includes over 3,000 animatronic figures and over 2,000 static figures, as well as over 1,000 visitor experiences.
Outlining LF Studio’s wide array of capabilities, Rottinghaus says it can deliver on the full spectrum of client needs:
“For instance, we can deliver anything from a simple static or pneumatic-based animatronic figure to a highly complex electric motor-driven figure. Often, we’ll combine the two. If a client needs something with lots of different movements, and the budget is limited, we can design it so that certain movements are pneumatic, while others leverage the fine motor movements available through electric motors.
The company’s ability to offer flexible solutions means it can work with museums and smaller theme parks, or with Disney and Universal-scale parks. Wiener explains that LF can do everything from initial concepting for clients that don’t have their own creative design studio, to working with clients that have a clear design requirement, developing this into technical and engineering designs.
However, he adds:
“Creative design and design engineering are just the start. We can fabricate digitally and we’re also embracing new printing technologies. We are doing things with 3D printing that I never dreamed possible. Also, we work with classic plastics and fibreglass. We can make master models, either sculpting those digitally or through classic hand sculpting. Our costuming department has become extremely sophisticated and accomplished. We also have all the technical armature capabilities, multiple materials and techniques, fabrication, and delivery.
“We have even extended from that core business of figures into the show set realm, with media and interactives. That’s a whole new aspect of the company. It completes the full suite of capabilities that we’re able to offer.”
A talented team
LF Studios has developed a team with a broad range of talents. This includes designers, engineers, sculptors, fabricators, show and theatre tech specialists, fashion designers, welders, painters, show producers, maya animators, digital modellers, and more – all of whom work in-house.
It is, as Wiener puts it, the people that make it:
“This group of artists and technicians have been brought together to create something extraordinary. It’s extremely unique in this industry to get the talent pool in such synchronicity. There is a real team spirit.”
Having an in-house team allows the firm to be more flexible in its approach, working across different disciplines and bringing together everyone’s unique experiences and knowledge to work towards one shared goal, rather than working in traditional silos.
“We have created a group here that is truly media agnostic; we don’t have a bias towards a single medium, and that’s difficult to do,” says Heiligmann. “We get our whole in-house group and we put them in a room, and we say, ‘Okay, this client wants to tell this story. How do we do this in a way that utilises the best of what we have?’”
Rottinghaus adds:
“There is a great culture here of working together. The pandemic accelerated the use of tools like Teams and Slack. While those platforms were essential given the circumstances, they also create a non-personable electronic back and forth. So, it has been refreshing coming into the shop and seeing very deliberate steps of bringing people together to solve problems efficiently. For example, every day at 1:30, the leads of each department circle up in the shop and in 15 minutes talk through any red flags or hurdles.
“These types of interactions not only drive efficiency, but they also drive culture. It is great for us. But it’s even more important for our clients because everybody takes ownership and responsibility for what we’re delivering.”
Working with IP
As the trend for IP-based attractions has continued to grow, LF Studios has developed a strong focus on delivering IP-based projects. The team is also adept at understanding the needs of the IP owner.
Working with IP presents lots of challenges, and it’s important to get things exactly right, says Rottinghaus:
“Often, we will be a third party where there may be a large scope of work and a design firm, or a fabricator has the entire contract which includes animatronic figures. In these cases, we find ourselves under contract with the designer or fabricator, not the IP owner. We understand and respect our position from a contractual standpoint. However, at the same time, we have a strong understanding of the expectations of the IP owner.
“To that end, we approach those projects with their needs in mind. We’re not going to put ourselves in a position to jeopardize the delivery of the IP.”
“We will always try to be allegiant to the delivery of that IP and recognise that the owner, while they may not hold our contract, is just as important in the approval process for what we deliver.”
With well-known and well-loved brands, any mistake will be easy to spot, he adds:
“When you see things and you think, ‘No, that’s not what that character looks like,’ it only damages the brand of the IP. The approach might have reduced the cost of the figure and helped meet the financial goals of the project, but it does a disservice to the IP owner. When in doubt, we always want to put that IP police hat on.”
“It’s important to have a sensitivity to the IP, to the performance requirements,” says Wiener. “The nice part about LF Studios is that it’s small enough that you have personal contact when you’re having those conversations. You become like one team working together on a shared goal.”
Makers of Breakthrough Experiences
The ethos of LF Studios is ‘Making Breakthrough Experiences’. Its vision is to execute clients’ stories to the best of its ability, leveraging all the tools in its extensive toolbox to make design partners the heroes. Ultimately, the firm’s goal is to bring these amazing stories to life for millions of visitors across the world, bringing families together and creating memorable experiences.
Explaining the concept of ‘Making Breakthrough Experiences’, Heiligmann says:
“Ethos is exactly right. As you walk through our shop, that ‘spirit’ is at the heart of our culture. It is what we pride ourselves on. We deliver experiences that connect in emotional ways with the guests of our clients. These connections are at the heart of lasting memories for people and families around the world. What could be better than that?”
LF Studios in action
LF Studios’ talents can be seen in action in some key case studies.
For the Jekyll & Hyde Club Restaurant and Bar, the team’s goal was to immerse visitors in an interactive themed restaurant that provided a different experience each time they dined. The result was 12,000 square feet of theming across two genres. LF Studios created the animatronics and special effects, as well as the lighting, projection and audio.
The experience included interactive animatronics and effects via live actor remote stations. It also featured pre-programmed shows when the live actors were not scheduled.
Elsewhere, for the popular Dollywood theme park in Tennessee, the company was asked to create a visually impactful icon that would become the anchor of an evening show, and that would be seen from throughout the space. For it to be in keeping with the park’s overall theming, it had to feature butterflies.
To meet this goal, LF Studios designed a giant tree covered in 650 giant butterflies. These created a stained-glass-like appearance in the sunlight. It also featured an LED system, so that the butterflies created a nighttime light show. The sculpture had a custom control system to control all the internal and external lighting, and the team leveraged pre-visualisation to compress the on-site show programming time.
In the UAE, LF Studios worked with Warner Bros. Abu Dhabi to design, build and install animatronic figures inspired by much-loved characters from Hanna Barbera, DC Comics, and Looney Tunes. This project included the creation of over 100 animatronic figures, many of which were realised in 3D for the first time.
The team developed multiple sculpt and surface finishing techniques for each IP, to ensure the resulting figure maintained the signature look and feel from different eras of animation.
The evolution of LifeFormations
In 2023, LifeFormations rebranded as LF Studios. With so much focus on figures, both static and animatronic, LifeFormations built a reputation for being ‘the figures company’. This repositioning will allow the company to tap back into its roots in scenic fabrication with a focus on sculptural-based scenic fabrication and turn-key solutions, where both figures and scenic need to be closely integrated.
“In some ways, we have allowed ourselves to become pigeonholed,” says Rottinghaus. “But the reality is, in 2010 we bought a fabrication company that was doing amazing work in the museum market. That experience has set us up today to deliver speciality scenic fabrication. Especially when it is necessary to seamlessly integrate animatronics or show action into the show set.”
“From a branding standpoint, we needed to better represent ourselves as a solution provider. The new name is still reflective of the old with ‘LF’ representing LifeFormations. But we felt it equally important to lean into the ideals of our studio, a place where artisans, technicians, and engineers come together to deliver on our clients’ visions.”
The rebrand allows the firm to continue moving in step with its clients’ needs and expectations, adds Heiligmann:
“We are storytellers. Our goal is to be able to communicate stories in the most effective way possible, without limiting ourselves to one medium. We want to make sure we’re communicating stories clearly, using all the different media in our portfolio.”
New team members
To bolster these efforts, Jay Rottinghaus has been brought into the role of executive vice president of strategy. Ken Wiener has taken on the role of vice president of production.
“My role is 50/50 internal and external,” says Rottinghaus. “I’m looking at where have we been over the last 33 years, what the industry looks like going forward, and where we believe the opportunities are going to be. Internally, I’m looking at what strategy we need to build to start achieving those goals and what we need from an organisational infrastructure.”
Externally, he is also looking at who the right clients are and what the right projects are:
“We want to be very deliberate about building relationships. It’s a people business. We know that if we identify the right projects that fit us, we can then deliver for that client. And when we deliver for that client, it’s going to help make all those other internal strategies successful.
“I can’t even express how excited I am to turn the page and start writing a new chapter. And that’s true both for me in my career and for LF. We’re still in the same book, but we’re turning the page. Like a great author, we have the end in mind. But the journey of writing it is going to be exciting.”
An exciting time to be at LF Studios
LF is moving into a fluid, continually developing, and exciting area, at a pivotal time for the sector, says Wiener. He will oversee all facets of production, working to drive process and team alignment as well as efficiency and safety across all of the company’s work.
“One of the reasons I came here is because we’re small enough to be flexible and quick to respond, and that is important in an industry that continues to evolve. I’m here to help figure out our future clients’ needs, and how we can meet those needs. As a company we embrace that; we are always developing new techniques, new methods, and new ways to tell the story.
“This is an interesting time in our industry, and this is the right place to be, with people who really care, to develop and help our clients tell their stories.”
