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)
“Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)