Sparth (Nicholas Bouvier) is a French-born concept designer who has worked in the games industry for almost twenty years, starting in 1996. His work has evolved tremendously over the years and his style is instantly recognisable because of the bold shapes and colours he uses in his work.
Much of Sparth’s work is on his Artstation page, and it is plain to see how his approach to image creation has changed since his early material. Starting from 2003, his work is painterly and very appealing, but it definitely falls into the category of “standard painterly work” that the majority of concept artists and digital illustrators have been producing for years.
At some point in his own personal development, Sparth started to make extensive use of the lasso tool and gradients, which gave his work an extremely “clean” feel and made his images very readable. In addition to this clean approach, he also uses very bold colours and unorthodox palettes, giving his work a “Syd Mead” edge.
It’s virtually impossible to tell that the two pictures above were produced by the same artist, but that’s what over a decade of experience and experimentation does for you.
As well as being a great artist and busy professional, Sparth is very active in the online art community and encourages others to try new ideas in much the same way that he has. As an innovator, Sparth has helped a lot of aspiring artists by setting particular challenges (such as painting only with a square brush) and also sharing his own techniques, approaches and tools with the community.
Digital Visualisation 