Greeble

Greebles, also called greeblies (singular: greebly)¹ or nurnies, are small relief 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.²³

The term "greeblies" was coined by George Lucas in the 1970s to describe details on model ships used in the production of Star Wars.¹ 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 series,² while the model-making team of 2001: A Space Odyssey referred to them as "wiggets".⁴

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.⁵ In the production of Star Wars, many ship models began as simple shapes that were given visual complexity by attaching greebles taken from commercially-available model kits.³ Greebling is a common aspect of Lego model design.⁶⁷