In comics, motion lines (or movement lines or action lines or speed lines) is a term that refers to the abstract lines that appear behind a moving object or person to make them look like they're moving quickly. The use of motion lines may have been inspired from both mathematical vectors, which are used to indicate direction and force, and from long-exposure photography, where a camera can capture lights as they move through time and space, blurred along the direction of motion.
Famous quotes containing the words motion and/or lines:
“No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Who will in fairest book of Nature know
How virtue may best lodged in beauty be,
Let him but learn of love to read in thee,
Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.
There shall he find all vices’ overthrow,
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty
Of reason,”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)