From concept to completion, there’s a lot that goes into the design of a vehicle. Hydra Design Lab is in the forefront of automotive design, delivering visuals used throughout the design and manufacturing process with a strong focus on the development of concept vehicles. Working together to bring over 20 cars into production, their years of unique expertise has served as the backdrop to the latest concepts coming out of the design lab that includes the development of the Northrop Grumman Ground Mobility Vehicle (GMV), an enhanced version of the Humvee that reduces weight, increases power, improves ground clearance and has a longer range. They use KeyShot to create the incredible images for their wide array of projects. Jon Hull, founder of Hydra Design Labs, fills us in.

Jon Hull Hydra Design Labs

hydradesignlabs.com – hydra101.com

Hydra Design Labs started three years ago when Jon was working at the Mitsubishi Motors Research and Development center in Southern California. The studio where Jon had been working as a designer for 13 years was closed down, leaving himself and the proud team of professionals with a new opportunity. The opportunity to go at it on their own starting, a new design studio, Hydra Design Labs. “Since opening we have been keeping busy providing automotive design work for a wide range of clients from individual investors and small start-ups to larger studios such as Nissan and Northrop Grumman,” says Jon, “the professional experience all of the designers in our group [is unique]. Each designer has designed both Exteriors and Interiors of both Production and Concept Vehicles. This provides a level of expertise that, while found in designers of other studios, is unique to be found throughout the entire team of Hydra Design Labs. This allows us to have any of our designers run a project from start to finish by themselves or put all of the designers together on the same project to get the full strength of our combined experience working as a team.”

When Jon first started in the automotive industry, setting up and rendering an image using the top of the line software to create visuals was a process that involved days if not weeks of work. “Fast forward 10 years and KeyShot has made those days a laughable memory of wasted time. Jon shares with us, “With KeyShot, we can create renderings in minutes rather than weeks, all with photo-realistic quality that physically wasn’t possible before. It has literally changed our entire workflow, speeding it up, enhancing it, providing unique solutions to our entire presentation. In some cases, KeyShot renderings have actually replaced physical modeling in certain stages of a project. Clients are using the photo-realistic qualities of our KeyShot renderings to present and sell ideas where before they might have used quarter-scale clay models.”