Greebles

Greebles are small details used to break up a large form, usually to give a sense of scale or to make an invented object more believable.


Greebling is a design philosophy used by visual development artists. In this greebled cube, the abstract forms suggest a profusion of buildings or pseudo-functional working parts.

Model builders for the original Star Wars movie coined the term to describe the way the Death Star and the Imperial Star Destroyer were festooned with small styrene pieces and parts kit-bashed from plastic model kits. Greebles have also been called “nurnies,” “wiggets,” “flidgets,” and “guts-on-the-outside.”

Traditional painters and digital artists develop their own instincts for greebling. In this close-up of a dinosaur-based vehicle from Dinotopia: First Flight, greebles appear between the smoother outer forms of the neck sections.

Greebled cube courtesy Wikipedia/ Greeble.
More at Wikipedia.com/Greeble
Related term on GJ: “Confetti”