Grian

     

Charles (born: August 9, 1993 (1993-08-09) [age 26]), better known online as Grian (formerly Xelqua), is a British YouTube gamer who makes Minecraft building tutorials, plays Minecraft minigames and is a part of the popular HermitCraft server. He is also known for his affiliation with the immensely popular Minecraft MMORPG, WynnCraft, which he helped create. On occasion, he also posts video blogs (vlogs), usually about his holiday trips and invitations to Minecraft conventions, and occasionally plays other non-Minecraft games (such as "Who's Your Daddy?" and GangBeasts). He is also known for having participated in the Minecraft Evolution (or EVO) server for 51 episodes. Many of his videos involve collaborations with other Minecraft YouTubers and friends such as Taurtis, DomRao, NettyPlays and the hugely popular Minecraft YouTuber Mumbo Jumbo, plus a few other smaller YouTubers.

Grian's channel exploded quite quickly, and was one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube for a short period of time, after uploading the video, "5 Easy Steps To Improve Your Minecraft House". Many of his tutorials focus on how to improve existing builds and often focus on how to improve building skills in specific areas, such as building pillars, towers, roofs, and of course, rustic houses, a subject which has become something of a running joke on the channel.

Before YouTube

Grian originally started his channel in late 2009; however, he did not begin to grow exponentially until 2014, then hit 1000 subscribers on 2015, and his life before YouTube played a major part in his success.

CraftedMovie

Before Grian became a fairly large YouTube personality, he was a part of the channel CraftedMovie, a Minecraft cinema channel that was active between 2011-2015. The channel originally consisted of a few starting members who starred in the short cinema clips; however, Grian became a part of the CraftedMovie team when he was invited to join the team as a set builder. Grian was one of the various members who joined the CraftedMovie team after the original founders. After building sets behind the scenes for a long while, he eventually started appearing in videos of his own due to popular demand, starring as his own character, with a Minecraft version of Link from the game Zelda as his skin. Grian became a popular internet personality through CraftedMovie. At the time, CraftedMovie was one of the largest Minecraft cinema channels and was one of the pioneers of cinema-type content in Minecraft.

After many years, the overall humor of the videos decreased and the channel's amount of subscribers depleted rapidly. The channel was not extremely profitable due to YouTube's algorithms, so a number of CraftedMovie personnel, including Grian, decided to shift their focuses to work on other projects, including Grian's own YouTube channel. His personal channel quickly became wildly more successful than CraftedMovie.

Wynncraft, an enormous Minecraft MMORPG server project which members of CraftedMovie and Grian greatly contributed to, eventually lead to the dissolve and permanent death of the CraftedMovie channel, paving the way for Grian's personal YouTube channel to grow, and the innovative Wynncraft server to be created under Grian's lead.

Wynncraft

Wynncraft was a major project that was mainly focused on by Grian and others between the gradual death of CraftedMovie and the explosion of Grian's own YouTube channel. Based on classic MMORPG-type games, Wynncraft was developed almost entirely under Grian for about three years. It was wildly successful and attracted many MMO-loving Minecraft players. Grian's originally-small fan base came mainly came from the Wynncraft community, and the channel became increasingly more popular with their publicity. Since Grian's YouTube channel took off, Grian has shifted his attention away from Wynncraft and more towards YouTube, which has angered some Wynncraft players, since Grian was one of the primary leaders. However, this has not stopped Wynncraft from being Minecraft's largest MMORPG with nearly 2 million regular players. As of August 2018, Wynncraft still holds the World Record for the largest MMORPG in Minecraft.

HermitCraft

As of July 19th, 2018, Grian is a member of the HermitCraft Server. His first appearance was at the beginning of HermitCraft Season 6 (sometimes called "Season VI") and was one of the few new hermits to join the server this season. On the server he plays with many other creators ,some he's close to in the server are MumboJumbo and Iskall85 whom of which they made architect a big retailer on the server (also known as Sahara).

He joins 21 other hermits, including another well-known hermit known as Mumbo Jumbo who is friends with Grian, having recorded a documentary about Grian and his cats not too long before the new HermitCraft server began.

Evo SMP

On January 10th 2017, Grian joined the Minecraft Evolution SMP as an "Evolutionist". The SMP took place in Minecraft from Beta, and players could slowly advance to a later version of Minecraft, i.e. after Beta was version 1.1, then advancing to version 1.2, etc., allowing an opportunity for players to experience older versions of Minecraft that they may not have played before. It consists of Grian, Taurtis, NettyPlays and other people Grian has met over the years.

On August 17th 2018, just after entering version 1.7 of Evo, Grian announced via Twitter that he would no longer be a part of the Evo server, stating that while he didn't enjoy it too much anymore, he had enjoyed his time there, and the other members would be continuing to be a part of the server after his departure. One final episode of the SMP was released after announcing that he would be leaving. As of August 2018, it was his longest-running series on the channel.

List Of Videos

2014

• Zombie Dungeon Timelapse - Wynncraft Creation
• Building with Grian - Minecraft Spike Tutorial
• Building With Grian - Minecraft Tree Tutorial

2015

• Building with Grian - Minecraft Rustic House Tutorial
• Minecraft Timelapse: Aldorei Valley
• Building with Grian - Horse Cart
• Minecraft Let's Build: Let's Transform a Village! - Episode 1
• Minecraft: An Iron Heart
• Minecraft Let's Build: Let's Transform a Village! - Episode 2
• Building with Grian - Voxel Sniper Basics Tutorial
• Wynncraft: Mysterious ties
• GODZILLA in Vanilla Minecraft - Map Showcase
• Building with Grian - Hobbit hole
• Wynncraft Q&A - Gavel!
• Let's Review: Build Battle!
• 5 Easy Steps To Improve Your Minecraft House
• Building With Grian - Minecraft Desert House

Trivia

• He is the creator of TNT run, which is now a popular minigame used in multiplayer minigame servers such as Hypixel. He also created the popular minigame "Build Swap".
• Grian has two pet cats, named Maui and Pearl. His friend, and fellow Minecraft YouTuber, Mumbo Jumbo, met up with Grian in June 2018 to film a mini documentary about Grian's cats, Pearl and Maui.
• Grian has a Degree in Biology.
• He has a gay sister.
• He was formerly the owner of the mc.Grian.net Minecraft multiplayer server, which hosted many minigames, including a "Survive the Disasters" minigame, which he has featured on his YouTube channel in his videos. Sadly the server had to be shut down as funding ran out.
• His favorite color is brown.