Greebles, also called greeblies (singular: greebly) or nurnies, are small

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

details used to give visual complexity to a model. The act of decorating a model with greebles is known as greebling. While greebling originated as a technique in filmmaking, it is commonly used in model-making, toy design, and

kitbashing Kitbashing or model bashing is the practice of making a new scale model by taking pieces out of kits. These pieces may be added to a custom project or to another kit. For professional modelmakers, kitbashing is used to create concept models for ...

. The term "greeblies" was coined by

George Lucas George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker and philanthropist. He created the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana Jones'' franchises and founded Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairman ...

in the 1970s to describe details on model ships used in the production of ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...

''. Ron Thornton is credited with coining the term "nurnies" to refer to CGI technical detail that his company Foundation Imaging produced for the ''

Babylon 5 ''Babylon 5'' is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Tel ...

'' series, while the model-making team of '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' referred to them as "wiggets". In science-fiction model design, greebles are used to imply mechanical function without necessarily having any real purpose. They may also serve to create an illusion of scale. In the production of ''Star Wars'', many ship models began as simple shapes that were given visual complexity by attaching greebles taken from commercial model kits. Greebling is a common aspect of

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

model design.

References

{{reflist Computer graphic techniques Film and video technology Scale modeling Special effects 1970s neologisms Science fiction terminology Star Wars Sculpture techniques

See also

References