Structura: The Art of Sparth

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Editorial Reviews

Structura: The Art of Sparth is a collection of his personal artwork. Sparth has been an active artistic director and concept designer for the gaming industry for over ten years. Currently with idsoftware in Texas, a renowned leader in the gaming world with such titles as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom I and II, and Quake I and II, Sparth has been integral in designing the games that the video game enthusiasts of today devour. In both his professional and personal work, there are no limits to Sparths creativity when it comes to translating forms and concepts with an creativity when it comes to translating forms and concepts with an experimental and original approach. Born in France and having traveled the globe extensively, he was influenced greatly by the various world cultures he encountered, and this is largely responsible for his multiple creative passions, which range from space to architecture, robotics and beyond.

Customer Reviews

Sparth is great, 2008-09-19
by Thomas L. Denmark (CA)

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.

Amazing artwork, 2008-09-08
by D. Theriault (Idaho Falls, ID)

Sparth is one of the greatest concept artists, and this is a great book of his work.

Best Sparth book ever! But...., 2008-06-04
by Richard Green (Seattle)

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.

Phenomenal concept art, 2008-05-21
by Charles Houghton (New York, NY USA)

Sparth brings a humanity to concept art and design. At this price, everyone interested in Movie and Games production should have this densely creative book in their library. The french designers are poignantly different from american designers, a gap which I appreciate and honor.

The work shown in this volume is mostly painted environments and vehicles. A couple pages of charcoal sketches and some plein-air digital work. It also has a good amount of robots and characters.