Jean-Pierre Hurel – 3D Visual Art & SketchUp

Interview with Jean-Pierre Hurel – 3D Visual Art and SketchUp

Jean-Pierre started working with SketchUp back in early 2008 and since then, successfully incorporated it into his daily creative workflow. His art has been described as imaginative, wild, crazy, cubist and even surreal. His superbly detailed models and work has amazed many and it caught our attention too. Recently we managed to grab an interview with Jean-Pierre and find out what makes him tick and share some of his work with you, including some really striking artwork done with various other design software, as it is certainly worthy of a mention here!

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Jean-Pierre Hurel (better known as Orgelf in the design communities) and I am a visual artist.

How did you initially start out and get into 3D art?

I used to practice painting all day, until I saw the 3D work of a friend of mine, Sébastien Laroche. His work particularly impressed me and it triggered something within me, a desire to learn these techniques of working with 3D. So now, I do my drawings in the morning and 3D art for the rest of the day.

SketchUp, Zbrush and Blender

When did you first come across SketchUp?

It first began three years ago with Zbrush and then one day, Frenchy Pilou, another 3D artist friend and SketchUp user, came into my place and showed off what SketchUp could do so easily and quickly. I must say, I was very impressed with SketchUp and decided to integrate it into my own workflow.

Describe what you like about SketchUp and why it appeals to you?

SketchUp is very simple and intuitive and has a very easy learning curve……not a lot of tools to use (draw then push/pull gets you started very quickly)….then just let your imagination go!

Which areas of practice do you find it most useful for?

For mechanics or architecture, it is just perfect and also for building and creating big scenes. Organics is a slightly different proposition, but this is improving with the implementation of many new plug-ins. For the human forms in my 3D work I use MakeHuman for body and pose. I just modify or erase some parts of it then to suite what I want.

When working with SketchUp which part do you enjoy most?

I really enjoy modeling complex 3D scenes with some narration in it, for example one of my favorites is the ‘Jerusalem Celeste’, containing quite complex detailed geometry.

SketchUp Plan View Jerusalem Celeste

Description: There are four towers for the four evangelists. In the center is a park and in the middle of the park, the mystical lamb. From this lamb, comes a cross that goes inside a levitating gray building . At the top of this there is the original garden (Eden) with the tree of good and evil. There are three main characters Adam and Eve, and God who is showing them the devil defeated. At the corner of this garden are four statues of the evangelists. Each statue is in front of its own tower. Down in the park, a big red crystal symbolizes the sacrifice of Christ on earth. There are a few characters positioned in this area, including sheep, birds, angels and dead people with square heads. At the very summit of all this, the door of heaven (closed) with two archangels to defend it.

SketchUp Elevation

SketchUp Tower Detail

What other 3rd party software do you use in conjunction with SketchUp for your artwork?

For my illustrations I mainly use software like Blender, Shaderlight, Zbrush as you know, and of course Photoshop. Here are some examples of my favorite work with the software used in its creation.

SketchUp, Zbrush, Blender and Photoshop

SketchUp, Blender and Photoshop

SketchUp and Photoshop

SketchUp, Shaderlight and Photoshop

SketchUp, Zbrush and Photoshop

SketchUp and Blender

What are your plans for the future Jean-Pierre?

I have updated my computer with a new graphic card that will allow me to do faster photo-realistic renders using LuxRender (Blender) with its new OpenCL GPU rendering(version 8), so hopefully I will be showing some new and exciting creations of mine to all you guys real soon!

Thanks for your time Jean-Pierre

A collection of Jean-Pierre’s other artwork: