Fanclub We are not droids! *The official General Grievous fanclub v2.0*

Ok. I'll check it out.

Is it alright if we post stuff from Legends about him?

And thanks for the follow.

 

Oh yeah, post away. I found all of the Visionaries story somewhere, and have commented on it. Might post the whole thing.
And I'll yet you know I'm great at very long replies
Edit: 250 posts. That's another star I think.

 

KaleeshEyes

Awesome. Can't wait to see it.

Here's GG from the awesome Republic comics.

 

Promised this. I'm going to post the Star Wars: Visionaries story The Eyes of Revolution, written and illustrated by Warren Fu.
I'll only do three pages for now, as it will clutter up the thread a bit otherwise. If the mods don't want it up here due to copywrong, please say so.
I personally think the illustrations are quite good, but that the story has some issues with respect to other works and the character in general.
I'll post up the rest tomorrow hopefully.

 

Nice picture; always great to see what the E.U. artists could draw; I don't actually own anything, however.

Just remember that if you are going to post artwork here (which you should) that is not actually from the books, shows and such 'official' stuff, try and make sure that it is good, high quality artwork, and tasteful. Leave the 'interesting' stuff for the P.T. social thread. Examples of what not to post in this thread include a lot of stuff found here, here, here and here (you should be able to discern which).
Below are examples of suitable artwork:

 

Here's the next four

 

KaleeshEyes

Awesome!

You got anymore?

 

I always loved this backstory. Grievous to me, is a tragic character. Hate the idea that he willingly became a cyborg in TCW.

 

Yep. I've decided to bite the bullet and do the rest at once. Deliveranze can you please remove the pics from your reply? Will make things neater.

 

***Comments***

 

Yep. His character here is slightly too absolute and the story could use work, but the tragic element has always attracted me to his story. The idea that he was taken against his will and forcibly converted into being a monster. So unlike the other villains, who all chose their own paths. TCW removes that uniqueness.
Edit: Thanks for removing the pics. Much neater now (and slightly faster to load)

Ezon Pin very intelligent. Also you said you wouldn't visit, remember?

 

KaleeshEyes

Have you read Labyrinth of Evil? Grievous is great in that.

 

Bits of it, and I know most of what happens with respect to him. I'd like to get a copy but that requires money I don't have (just started uni). Will be looking at the local libraries in the term break, but don't expect to find it. Seems hard to get down here, couldn't find it on the Aus amazon site.
A huge amount of my SW knowledge comes from the internet. You can learn so much off it. There's a whole bunch of TCW episodes that come and go from youtube for example, which makes it very convenient if you want to look something up (especially if you find TCW fairly unmemorable like I do).
I actually found the story I posted above on this site. Somebody had posted it on the old General Grievous thread in 2005 before RotS came out. Remarkable.

 

Alright. I hope you can read it sometime, because it's one of the best books of the old EU, imo.

Have you read GG's pages on Wook?

 

Oh yeah, of course I have. The article's too long though. It could do with being completely re-written, as could most of that site. There's a lot of waxing lyrical and not enough matter-of-fact. The description of the lightsaber battle in SW '77 makes it sound like a lot more happened than actually did. They should be written as if they are describing or summarising a story, not as if the events happened in real life. And that's before I get to the jargon, syntax, structure and punctuation...

And the canon and legends stuff should all be on the same page in seperate sections. They shouldn't be in two pages, and one shouldn't just replace another, as the information will be lost. Anyway I don't think it's a very good site, but it's the best we've got.

Edit: Yes, I hope I can get LoE, but out of print books that are no longer a part of the official canon might be a little difficult, and Australia is a rubbish country for that sort of stuff in general.

 

I hear ya. Wook can be frustrating at times.

Why is it like that over there?

 

You or others may not agree, but I think it's a delusional thing. People think that these things are super important and require loads of detail, without realising that Star Wars is at its deepest about the characters, not the objects. Check out RedLetterMedia reading the article on Darth Vader's suit. It sounds so ridiculous because the authors missed the wider picture. We didn't need to know those details, and if you're going that far you should go all the way and name the contractors for example.
To swing back to General Grievous my problem with him is not his design or whatever, its the inconsistency in his character. I know a lot of people, especially those who love the prequels, love the special effects and whatever, but as I explained in the CT forum what made the first film great was the characters; something that seems to have been forgotten.

 

Continuing the theme above, I also am enamoured of Grievous as a tragic character (and will defend the primacy of that story to death, or to the point of ignoring other idiots, anyway), and I have even thought of ways this could have been worked into the P.T. in order to, (a) show it; and, (b) use it to add some greater meaning to the story told in the P.T.
It also gives an excuse to post this great picture:

 

So you're saying you're upset about how Lucas handled GG in ROTS, right?

 

I am a little upset about that, I didn't say so there.
GG's character is too inconsistent between series/texts (both canon and non-canon). That's his biggest flaw as a character, but has an unexpected advantage in that I can interpret him how I want. Every cloud's got a silver lining.
I was replying to your comment about why Wookieepedia is a tad overwritten. I think since the PT era began too much focus has been given to physical details and not enough to the characters. Just my $150.45 2 cents. Anyway that's now way away from what this thread needs.

DarthCricketer I thought I posted that one somewhere. Apparently it wasn't here. Something special about being him, of all Star Wars characters, crying. Yet I think he's got plenty of reasons to do so. Actually, anybody notice how crying isn't a big thing in Star Wars in general.
Once again his emotions are seen through his eyes. The title says it all: Tears on a Face of Metal.

Edit: *sigh*. I wish more people posted in this thread. I think I've got nearly half the posts in it. Even the views count isn't that great. I post this great story and only a few dedicated people comment. Apparently there just aren't that many GG fans outside of deviantArt. I just can't discuss things, they peter out so quickly.

 

Unfortunate, but it shows how unappreciative many people seem to be of his looks, if nothing else (and so many people like Darth Maul, also for no reason). And the attitude of Star Wars' producers has never been too encouraging either. I guess we will have to just keep this going ourselves; or even intimidate people into coming here.

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General Grievous is great

 

Folks, I have an important question. How can I start my own fan club?

 

This'll be a long post with multiple unrelated subjects. Just warnin' ya's

Captain Han Solo
If you want to make your own fan club you've got to find a character or set of characters you like that hasn't already got a fun club thread. This depends on their importance. I could create this one because General Grievous is a more important character than the rest of the CIS leaders, who already had a fan club thread. Try find an existing thread first. And the mods probably won't take kindly to any silly ones. You can't help but try though.

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Anyway, a few days ago I was reading article in which some guy from whatever production team it was talked about how they designed General Grievous for the movie. One thing which he touched on was how they changed his stance from Warren Fu's original concept to the one that we see in the movie.​

In the older concept drawings such as the one below from 2002 he was a much more upright figure with a much more evenly distributed mass​

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This very upright stance notably has the neck vertical and the head perched straight on top of it, which is of course rather different to what we saw in the movie.​

It was after production had already begun (of course) that George Lucas decided he wanted to have the character have a much more hunched stance. The reasons for this were multiple (and stupid)(you can't accuse me of mincing my words). The one I hear most often proffered is that he would look more sinister, but I think he should be boldly intimidating and unsubtle, and that he seemed more like an old tired man (the sinister character was in any case filled by Palpatine), and the other was that combined with the coughing fits and ungainly movement he wanted to portray being a cyborg as a 'disadvantage' although I think that's silly and unneeded.​

In any case a hunched stance was in order for Grievous and his head began a slow migration around his body. If you look at the last page of the Visionaries comic above and some of the maquettes form the making of videos you can see that he has a 'natural' head and neck, slightly canted forward, rather than the bolt upright one he had in the picture above.​

In order to create the markedly hunched stance that was portrayed in the movie the neck ring was made larger and brought forward and the torso was made tighter and more tapered. You can see from the bottom left frame on page ten from the Visionaries comic that his chest plate design was more or less finalised by 2004 but as previously mentioned the last page shows a natural stance for the head, although the mask design means that the 'chin' is tucked awkwardly into the chest.​

For the movie the neck ring is not on top of the shoulders but more on the front at a angle of around forty degrees. This looks fairly natural when he is standing upright from the front or from an angle, as can be seen when him and Kenobi face of it the film, where Grievous' head seems to sit a little forward of his chest, just as Kenobi's does, and his chin is no longer buried in his chest. From the side however it can be seen that his head does sit unnaturally far forward, as seen nearer the end of the fight when he grabs Kenobi.​

Of course during most of his screen time he adopts the prescribed hunched stance and his head sits very far forwards.​

Since episode III nothing was of course done until he was redesigned again for The Clone Wars. This design brought back the ringed neck articulation originally seen in the original Clone Wars, but his upper body was much wider and the hunched stance became very exaggerated. In TCW the upper part of his back plate is curved forward and the opening for the neck is very steeply angled. As a result he always had an exaggerated hunch even when standing upright, something he rarely is seen to do.​

Anyway, reading the article made me realise that his hunched stance has become more exaggerated over time. I personally think he should have remained with the natural stance he had in the Visionaries story.​

Also mentioned in the article was that other changes were made for the film. His height was actually reduced from around eight feet to around seven feet when upright. So when Anakin says he's shorter than expected, he's right. Personally, I could describe my thoughts at this, but a lot of the words are on the disallowed list. They also changed the shape of his eye holes to make him look more intimidating (ironic considering how they spent a lot of time doing making him less so). The original eyes had a much more arched brow and the inside was curved so that the inside corner was close to a right angle. This was changed to the more familiar design near to a Reuleaux triangle.​

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Now back to a more philosophical note, I though I'd share a couple of other people's picture that help to represent the change that he underwent in is conversion from an ordinary warrior to a cyborg monster, They're not great but help to share a point about how who he was as a person was effectively destroyed when he had this forced upon him, which is what makes his a tragic story.​

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Anyway, you'll be glad to know that I haven't just been writing on here. I've also been writing a couple of stories. The first one I started is nothing special, and i haven't worked on for a while. It's supposed to be a partial life story focusing on his conversion and a modified version of his death, written from and internalised view, so I can project his emotions and feelings. I've had trouble getting it started though, and it will likely wait a while. I can keep the details in my head though.​

The other one I started a few days ago and is a short story which has him being captured rather than being killed and had Mace Windu administering a rather Nineteen-Eighty-Four treatment to him, out of malice. I'm trying to a) jerk a tear b) make Kenobi seem more moral and c) show buy view of the PT Jedi, which is of an arrogant organisation who merely profess to be good without actually knowing what it means. Any, I have university to worry about but I may post one of these stories on here at some point in the future (that may be up to a year away). I'd also like to make a really long book about him, a biography, but I ain't that good a writer and I can't commit to things over a week, let alone a couple of years. I'm also working on some illustrations, and also know a source of more talented ones, but you probably won't see those.​

Speaking of stories I'd like to talk about a couple of my favourite fanfics, but that shall wait for another post, as this one is long enough.​

Anyway, this is your president KaleeshEyes. I hope I don't seem too strange for you​

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Detail!