Dracula’s stomach-churning Human Body Experience generates export dollars

DRACULA’S is exporting its ghoulish genius after developing a giant new “edutainment” attraction for the Science Centre Singapore.

Jager Greinke checks out the Human Body Experience (HBX), which will be put on a plane an

DRACULA’S is exporting its ghoulish genius after developing a giant new “edutainment” attraction for the Science Centre Singapore.

Dubbed Human Body Experience (HBX), the fun, fantastical 1000m square attraction takes visitors on a 3D, interactive trip through the human digestive system to help them experience what it’s like to be swallowed and processed by the body.

“It’s like someone swallowed a fun park,” Dracula’s creative director Marc Newman said yesterday.

“You climb in through the mouth and you get digested and you go out through the anus.”

A team of 15 artists, sculptors and engineers, lead by longtime Drac’s props master Shane ``Zip’’ Greinke, have spent the past nine months cooking up HBX’s larger-than-life intestines, churning and beating organs and flatulence effects at their warehouse workshop in an industrial estate at Burleigh.

The result is a world-first human anatomy edutainment adventure that uses state-of-the-art technology from hologram effects to a huge, custom-made inflated brain and audio visual show, 3D video mapping and a touch-activated sound sensory experience to recreate a soft and spongy, churning and breathing digestive system.

People crawl into the mouth of a giant face before they slide through the twisting tunnels of the throat, crawl through veins and arteries, squeeze along an oesophagus, bounce inside the stomach and arrive in the squelching chambers of the vital organs.

“Zip has taught himself 3D computer mapping so he can now design all these things and spin them around and do engineering drawings and create scale drawings for the sculptors,” Mr Newman said..

“Zip and I have developed our own way of using fibreglass fabrics and latex and different resins and additives. The building methods we’ve used have been very unconventional.”

The Drac’s team can even operate the attraction remotely in Singapore from a computer on the Gold Coast.

“The show system is really advanced. We can adjust and program it from our ipads in Australia. We can sit there and make the throat close,” Mr Newman said.

The science centre commissioned the work after discussing potential projects with Mr Newman at an attractions convention in Orlando, in the US.

“They were going to go with the big guns of the American theme park producers and then they said we want to go to you guys because you put on mad shows and everything you do is a bit offbeat,” Mr Newman said.

“They said have you got an idea and I said how about crawling through the mouth of a giant face and experiencing the body from the inside.”

Directors from the science centre flew in and out of the Coast overnight on Tuesday to test HBX and were thrilled with the results.

“The love it,” Mr Newman said.

“They said this is why we got you guys — because you approached education from a totally unconventional way.”

HBX will now be pulled apart, barcoded and packed into five 40-foot high-top shipping containers (“as big as the U2 tour” Mr Newman said) and sent to Singapore to be reassembled for its official opening on June 1.

While it’s Dracula’s first international project, Mr Newman said it won’t be the last, with interest in similar commissions from Dubai, Brunei, Malaysia and China.

“This is booked for two years in Singapore but they’re already saying what’s your next attraction so we’re on the drawing board with the next one,” Mr Newman said.

“We’re joint venture partners with the science centre. They’ve been integral and they’re introducing us to other countries. They’ve been taking a scale model of the attraction to trade fairs and industry forums and everyone is saying this is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

“Times are challenging on the Gold Coast and while Dracula’s has defied the trend, it doesn’t hurt to branch out into the area where all the growth is happening and that of course is Asia.

“We’re exporting. It’s nice to have a Gold Coast local business and local talent exporting and competing with the big guns of Unviersal Studios and companies like that.”