Nicolas &;Sparth&; Bouvier, has been an active Artistic Director and Concept Designer for the gaming industry for over 15 years. In Structura 2, he delights us with what he has been imagining for the last three years since the release of his first best selling book, Structura. This visually stunning book includes images from HALO, over seventeen new gorgeous books covers (for authors Greb Bear, Michael Flynn, L.E. Modesitt, Paul mcauley, Frank Herbert, Jonathan Strahan, Peter Watts and Christian de Montella, to name a few) and never before published personal science fiction pieces that will have your imagination running to the future!
 
Not to ignore the past, Sparth also shares his world of fantasy art pieces influenced by medieval times.
 
In addition to the amazing images that you will want to devour over and over, Sparth shares his expertise with several step by step tutorials focusing on specific Photoshop techniques using custom brushes, custom shapes, clone stamping and the smudge tool, to name only a few.
 
Be swept away into the imaginative and gorgeous world of Sparth&;s imagination and then pick up a few Photoshop tips to assist you in improving your digital artistic knowledge and visual communication skills!
 
 
 
 
 
Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier) has been an active artistic director and concept designer in the gaming industry since 1996. Born in France, he now lives in Seattle, Washington, working for Microsoft. Having had the privilege of traveling extensively at an early age to such places as far a field as the USA, Singapore, China, France and Europe, he was influenced greatly by the various cultures, and he enjoyed observing people and making notes of all these tiny details of life that he was witnessing. The varied influences are largely responsible for his multiple creative passions, which range from space, to buildings, to robotics and beyond.
 
There are no limits to his creativity when it comes to translating forms and concepts. One of his greatest passions remains contemporary architecture, of which he applies principles in his own art, with an experimental and original approach. He also harbors a fascination for modern skyscrapers, although he admits that he wouldn't be able to live too high above the ground himself.
 
Sparth has contributed to the development of several released games since 1997. Alone in the dark 4 (2001), Cold Fear (2005), Prince of Persia - Warrior Within (2004), and Rage, a project still in development at IDsoftware, and has participated with Darkworks-Studio, to a lot of game projects in collaboration with large companies like Capcom and Namco.
 
In 2003, he decided to leave Paris for Montreal in order to join Ubisoft on their ongoing projects, Prince of Persia Warrior Within, as well as Assassin's Creed. He left Montreal for Texas in October 2005, where he spent more than three years working for IDsoftware in Dallas. Finally, in January 2009, he joined Microsoft to participate to the future HALO adventures.
