And now my blog circle is complete.

In my June 2005 blog I had writen that due to another similary titled VIP blog here at the official site that I was renaming my little slice of cyberspace to "Die Jedi DIE!". The inspiration for the title came in part due to a General Grievous sticker given to me by the nefarious "Boba Bling" in the lobby of the Marriott waaaay after hours at Celebration III that April. I'm not sure whatever happened to Bling after he joined me and my friends, Jan Duursema and Quinlan Vos, in a shuttle from the hotel to a bar called Club Six in downtown Indy. Once there we sat down to play poker with Mas Amedda himself (or Rune Haako or Oppo Rancisis or Orn Free Taa or Graxol Kelvyyn or Horox Ryyder, take your pick) but the next thing I know the now helmetless hip-hoppin' 'til you don't stoppin' Mandalorian is nowhere in sight. I'm sure he's still out there somewhere though bustin' moves and taking down bounties in the hyperspace lanes.

Another memorable moment for me at Celebration III was when I met Matthew Wood in the Art Room. It was after hours and the show had just closed but I had left some things at my table that I needed to retrieve. As I was going in for them, Matt was using the room and finishing up an impromptu interview for a radio or TV station. I recognized him and on his way out I asked him, ok, maybe begged him, to give me a quote from Revenge of the Sith using the Grievous voice. Mind you, this was a month before the film was even released but I thought my friends who came back into the room with me would get a kick out of it. Matt happily complied and after clearing his throat he left us with the classic line, "You fool! I have been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku!" Even without the electronic gear on hand used to create the cyborg's synethic voice, the dialogue still gave us goosebumps and it was really cool meeting Matt.

But I digress...

After witnessing General Grievous on the big screen in May of 2005 and in the animated Clone Wars micro-series, I just fell in love with this compelling character. Actually my association and fascination with Grievous began a year earlier before RotS even arrived in theaters. For the second to last installment of the HoloNet News feature in Star Wars Insider #75 (before it returned from hiatus briefly in Star Wars Insider #84) writer Pablo Hidalgo introduced the new droid general and Separatist leader to fans in a story wherein I was to be the first artist outside of ILM to illustrate the character in published visual media. The only reference I really had to work with was an (amazing) Alex Jaeger concept painting of the character which was also used as the cover for #75. Still, I was incredibly excited to create a dynamic battle scene from the Clone Wars featuring this new villian.

But that illustration was actually only an aftermath of the Battle of Duros that Grievous had won and as fun as it was to litter the charred battlefield with the strewn corpses of clone troopers looking back a year later I realized I hadn't really scratched the itch of drawing the droid general actually in combat and dealing punishment at the height of his cyborg prime.

From that same earlier blog last June I spoke of my desire to take a very rough sketch I had done of Grievous in battle with Jedi Knights to a full color piece if I could someday find the time to do such an illustration. Because of my busy schedule, which hasn't really slowed down for the past two years, I never had the opportunity to do so but little did I know that friend and Star Wars author Abel Peña would make this Star Wars artist's personal fetish for Jedi death by Grievous come true.

In October of 2005 I recieved an email from my editor at Insider that he wanted me to illustrate for an upcoming feature written by Abel called "The Story of General Grievous". The story in fact was scheduled for an earlier issue that year and Abel had already pushed me to our editors as the artist for the project but they were planning on using pre-existing artwork and photos to save time and budget. But because of the delay in schedule of seeing the article published it was finally decided that new artwork would indeed be commissioned. Everything seemed to fall into place and it soon looked like I'd finally get to scratch that itch and tackle one of my favorite characters in a variety of action scenes and going toe to toe with Jedi... but not just any Jedi.

Here's some behind the scenes commentary for each illustration I provided for "The Story of General Grievous" in Star Wars Insider #86 which can now be viewed at my official site in my Star Wars Insider Art gallery -

The Story of General Grievous - At the center of the image is Grievous as his former alien Kaleesh self, Qymaen jai Sheelal, which was wholly inspired by a concept painting from ILM artist Warren Fu who established the visual design for the character in Episode III. It was my nod and homage to Grievous' own creator himself to incorporate the image of the character into my collage in my own graphic style. After having the pleasure of briefly meeting Warren at Celebration III I commended him on his work for the film and expressed my awe at his imagination for even conceiving of such an incredibly visually complex and iconic Star Wars villian.

The main motif for this piece was to show the readers a "before and after" of the character with the larger portrait of the cyborg version of the character looming over the wayward looking Kaleesh warlord like ill-fated destiny. Though the focus of this composition was of course all about Grievous, I wanted to surround him with the background players of his origin (or resurrection). Palpatine and Dooku (along with San Hill in the corner looking down at Qymaen and perhaps pondering his potential transformation) really set those plans in motion and I always look for an excuse to draw those Sith whenever possible. Their faces have so much character which I find fun to illustrate. I designed Dooku and Palpatine to have their lightsaber blades framing Grievous/Qymaen as if they were guardians of their dark side adept... or perhaps they are merely just protecting their "investment".

As secondary elements I decided to include his starfighter and personal MagnaGuard battle droid which would also help readers identify that this was indeed a Grievous story even if they were unfamiliar with his earlier persona at the focal point of the design. The bolted, metallic, rusted looking frame are meant to subtly accent the steely, cold, metallic nature of the villain's cyborg look and personality.

Qymaen and Ronderu Battle the Huk - I love drawing action scenes for Star Wars whenever possible and I love drawing Star Wars aliens since they are always so imaginative and unique in their designs. The Huk, which is actually the Kaleesh term to describe their Yam'rii enemies, are indeed otherworldly and unique looking. After reading the story text the image of Qymaen and his companion Ronderu staving off an attack on temple steps of their homeworld Kalee just immediately popped into my head. Though the compositional design came easy for me, it was a little trickier coming up with something as equally dramatic looking as Qymaen for the female Kaleesh warrior design.

Since I drew the artwork somewhat small I needed a readily identifiable visual cue to distinguish Ronderu as female and separate in gender from her male counterpart. I suppose I could have played up her bossom but I pictured her sinewy, lean and muscular like a fighter or martial artist. I also thought if I gave have her some sort of visible "mane" with the top knot braid like a samurai warrior that it would help as well. Though I thought the hair or mane could also easily be explained as another part to the animal originally whose trophy skull she is wearing as her mask.

This turned out to be one of my personal favorite Star Wars illustrations in a while. It's just appealing to me in a B-monster movie kind of way with the attacking Huk insectoids, creepy masks and green blood splattered swords.

The Training of General Grievous - This was my attempt to re-interpret a pivotal scene from the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel Star Wars: Visionaries which featured the origin story of Grievous as written and illustrated by Warren Fu. Another reason I chose to illustrate this particular scene was that it gave me another excuse to draw Count Dooku again. I love Christopher Lee as Dracula from the old Hammer horror films which made me relish the character of Dooku even more.

Though for his lightsaber initiation training he's holding the blue blade of fallen Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, (given to him by Dooku) his gleaming form is outlined with a red glow instead from the planet outside of the Separatist cruiser to accentuate the evil, dark side nature of the character.

The chair on this ship is actually of the same Genosian design that can be seen in the Separatist meeting room during AotC.

I designed the scene from the perspective of the IG MagnaGuard droid. Having him larger than Grievous pulls you into the scene quickly while you connect with the character... but don't get too attached. With that intimidating stare you just know that Grievous is about to cleave his sparring partner into pieces.

The Death of Ur-Sema Du - This is probably one of my favorite scenes from the feature, not just only for the fact that Abel's story gave me the opportunity to finally illustrate Grievous fighting a Jedi character, but also because it was a Jedi character that I created. I previously illustrated this female Jedi a few years earlier in my artwork for the Star Wars RPG book Power of the Jedi. In that artwork she and my other Expanded Universe Jedi character are about to battle a terrible creature called the Marsh Haunt. That illustration was special to me since it included two of my best friends (and fellow Star Wars artists) as their Jedi alter egos that I had created for them, Justin as Kai Justiss (read all about him here) and Jan Duursema as Ur-Sema Du.

Jan was working on the Attack of the Clones comic book adaptation for Dark Horse while I created my artwork for my Power of the Jedi project for Wizards of the Coast. Almost immediately after I completed my artwork she actually drew the Ur-Sema Du character in the background of the Geonosis arena as a corpse during the battle (which can be viewed here). Even though she happily posed for reference shots for me and she was flattered to be a SW character, I think she killed her character off so quickly just to tweak me.

Though it was indeed established that she died during the arena battle you could say reports of the events surrounding her true demise were *slightly* exaggerated or misinterpreted. Fast forward a few years later and Abel (ret-con extraordinoire) thought it would be interesting to list her among the Jedi killed by Grievous in the Geonosis catacombs for this article and I instantly pictured her death scene in my mind's eye. Since I was never satisfied with Jan's interpretation of the death of *my* character I took the initiative to shed the light on her actual final moments. The opportunities to work the character into the feature and take more reference photos of my beautiful friend in action were too good to pass up.

So it really wasn't until this article was published, over two years later from her debut, that Jedi Master Ur-Sema Du's name and final fate would be officially made part of canon in the Star Wars universe.

Of note - check out the paired trademark scars (as seen in RotS) above Grievous' right eye. The appearance of Grievous in the catacombs during the Battle of Geonosis was one of the earliest, if not first, encounters with Jedi in his new cyborg incarnation. Was the lightsaber of Ur-Sema Du responsible for those marks? Possibly. I'd like to think she got in a few good licks before Grievous and those pesky Geonosians got the upper hand on her.

The Padawans Face General Grievous - And finally, from a scene inspired by the events of Dark Horse Comics' General Grievous mini-series written by Chuck Dixon and illustrated by one of my all time favorite comic book artists, Rick Leonardi, we see a few Younglings with training sabers in hand staring up at what would be their greatest enemy ever faced.

For me, one of the more powerful images from RotS is when Anaking returns to the Jedi Temple to slaughter the Younglings. Their expressions of fear intermixed with confusion and horror as we the audience only see the newly christened Sith ignite his lightsaber before them was very emotionally intense since we knew what the imagery implied. Because of the similarities charicteristically between the cyborg villians, and also due to the repeating themes, scenes and dialogue throughout all aspects of the saga (if you liken it to a musical composition as George Lucas suggests), I was inspired to create a scene reminiscent of Darth Vader's confrontation with the Padawans for General Grievous himself.

I chose only to show part of Grievous, just his arm really and his activated lightsaber, and let the audience better connect with the reactions on the children's faces and identify with their own fear. As much as I love drawing the visually intricate and dynamic details of Grievous' form I decided that the image would be more powerful if the focus was less on the droid general and more about the frightened albeit defiant, small Jedi.

And just who might be the actual visual inspiration for those plucky Padawans? Banz and Allara of the Bergruutfa Clan are actually Jack (Jan's son) and Katie (the apple of my own eye) respectively

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You can also view some of the pencil sketches for these full color pieces in my Star Wars Sketchbook gallery.

Star Wars Insider #86 is on newsstands now so be sure to pick one up or feel free to purchase an autographed copy from my website. You can also grab brand new desktops for your PC featuring some of this artwork in my Downloads section.

For the rest of Grievous' story be sure to check out the Hyperspace feature "The Story of General Grievous II: Lord of War" and keep your eyes peeled on Abel Peña's blog, Only Sith Deal In Absolutes!, for his upcoming endnotes for even more story details and behind the scenes info.

And so, with a (Jedi death) wish fulfilled, my EU character finally canonized as a bonus, and finding ourselves as creators and fans at an era of endings and new beginnings for the saga we love, this shall be my last entry for this blog....



with this particular title



I just hope Boba Bling doesn't use a disintegration rifle on me when he finds out.