I have drawn people walking and dancing, jogging and even crawling. I have animated a galloping horse, a flock of walking sheep and many flying birds. Movement seems intrinsic to the world, it’s how we read the world, sense danger, catch prey. Having read much of the speed of early humans I wanted to draw some people running really fast, pushing our unique form of locomotion to its limits. I had planned to ask my son’s local running team but then this project came up. It’s surprising how often such happy coincidences occur.

I filmed the Team GB sprinters from way off across the running track to minimise parallax and then set about capturing the movement by drawing them frame by frame. I use a language of lines that comes naturally to me but also borrows from ancient hieroglyphics and modern signage. A functional outlining similar to a shadow. The animation process gives me around thirty drawings of each runner in consecutive poses and creates a pallet of images to compose complex groups. Watching races on TV reminded me of the groups of running athletes on Greek vases in the British Museum. I used the colours and lay out from these while imitating the engraving of ancient stone friezes with cut and layered card.

It was such a pleasure to work with these amazing athletes.