Customer Reviews

Structura: The Art of Sparth

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 0:16 Mins

Nicolas Bouvier is Sparth.

He has been an art director and concept designer in the gaming industry since 1996. Born in France, he now lives in Dallas, TEXAS, working for IDsoftware.

Included in the book are concept art and matte paintings from his impressive portfolio. Some projects he has worked on includes Alone in the Dark (2001), Prince of Persia - Warrior Within (2004), Cold Fear (2005), and Assassin's Creed (2007). Art for Alone in the Dark and Cold Fear are not included.

The theme for his art is primarily futuristic science fiction and space. There are quite a few cityscape paintings with flying ships. The worlds he created as just as imaginative as Star Wars. There's no caption on the art except for the titles and dates.

This book is recommended especially to science fiction concept artists.

Sparth has a website for the book, as well as a blog. You can find additional paintings in his art galleries.

If you interested in science fiction art, you might also want to check out Quantum Dreams: The Art of Stephan Martiniere and Quantumscapes: The Art of Stephan Martiniere also.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I've been a huge fan of Sparth's work for years and have awaited the arrival of this book for almost as long. Sparth's work is warm and highly creative and his influence over a generation of digital fantasy artists is only beginning to be seen as his style is frequently imitated. It's certainly a great book and a must-own, especially for a concept art book at this price.

My only disappointment is is the format size (which is why I still give this 5 stars, as I don't think this is the fault of the artist). These works deserve a much larger format than the medium/smallish 9 x 9 inches. Also, and this probably has more to do with who owns the image licenses than anything, there is a bit of "sameness", a slight lack of variety, about some of the work that's not apparent when viewing his website.

Still, a great book by any standard and an essential addition to any fantasy/sci-fi/art lover's book collection.

If you are interested in concept art, this compact book is like a master's class in how to represent ideas with freshness, clarity, and good design. I keep it next to my computer at work for inspiration, and if you are a concept artist you should too.

If you're into sci fi worlds and environments as much as I am you'll want to pick this one up. It's a great price considering it's loaded with beautiful and awe inspiring work from cover to cover. Highly recommended.

Truly awesome book. The diversity in color usage and scale by themselves are enough to recommend the book. But the imagination evident in the creation of each piece makes the book a bargain.

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Structure: The Art of Sparth is a good collection of his early work. I'm glad that such a great artist finally has some well-reproduced good paper good print artifacts. Can't wait for the next one!

I love this book. This is a great compilation of a great artist. The works contained here are true to the title of the book and I feel the art choosen is a great credit to the quality of work produced by Sparth. The pictures are detailed and wonderfully illustrated throughout the pages of the book with brief descriptions provided by the artist. I think this book works well for people who love art or want to gain inspiration for their own artwork.

I recommend this book to any aspiring concept artist starting out, it has amzing work and will inspire you for ages.

'structura: the art of sparth" is one of my favorite art books, it features artworks for numerous book covers and game design companies, fitting perfectly into the sci-fi fantasy world that i love. Each page is full of inspiration, with imagery of personal projects that are guaranteed to blow you away, i'm extremely happy with this purchase! 5 out of 5 stars!

Nicolas 'Sparth' Bouvier is a fantastic artist, and this book is filled with his works, so expectedly it's a fine book. It is a little on the small side in terms of it's physical dimensions, but the prints are nice. If you follow his work online, you probably won't see much here that you haven't seen on a website, but it's always nice to have a print that you can hold and look at, as opposed to just staring at glowing pixels. If you like sci-fi environments in particular, this won't let you down!