A Question for the Readers

Resorting to a bleg because I am new to the ways of the cartooning lexicon. Question: Does its rich word-hoard contain a special term -- like 'plewds' and 'briffits' -- for that graphical convention whereby the speed of some passing object or character is dramatised by drawing doubled-exposure head-turning onlookers?*

R.: Eagle with doubled head as it watches
rapid falcon turning in the widening gyre

I tried searching the Interlattice for the search term 'comic + convention'... the results were inconclusive, except to convince me that there are more people than there are lives.

Further research indicates, surprisingly enough, that doubled heads have only recently become the arbitrary standard. The convention has evolved, much in the manner of the evolution of the fork though in the opposite direction.** Three heads were common in Renaissance woodcutlery-cuttery, as shown in an image familiar from previous weekly installments of the Riddled World of Knowledge.

It is best if the heads look similar. Otherwise the sense of motion turns into an Allegory.

See how convincingly it works when done properly!
There can be too many heads in the turning time-exposure. If they blur together into a continuous curve, the onlooker looks like a butt-plug.


* Double heads are also a useful graphic shorthand for representing the erstwhile tyrant Typhon, in that scene in Sword of the Lictor where Severian encounters his dehydrated body and unwittingly activates the mechanisms that reanimate him.

I am beginning to wonder whether Bill Hammond really has the right aesthetic for our Illustrated Gene Wolfe project.

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** Note only two tines in Renaissance forks from 1573.

Yet Morton's Fork (1487) is clearly shown with a third tine already!