Explore This Rare Gallery of Hyper Detailed Star Wars Models

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.

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February 13th, 2015 2

The site Slightly Warped Curiosities has posted this wonderful, rare gallery of close-up photos of the Industrial Light & Magic spaceship models used in the first Star Wars trilogy. Anyone who scratch-builds models knows the importance of “grebble” — that’s the baroque surface detail–usually cool-looking bits “kit-bashed” from other models–added to make a ship look more authentic, more visually interesting.

In this gallery, we get to see Star Wars greeble in all of its glory. It’s fun to pour over these images and try to identify the origins of the bits and pieces used. It’s also very inspiring for those of us who’ve ever tried our hands at scratch-building spaceships. This is how the pros do it.