From Melbourne Cooper to Match of the Day and Mo-Cap: Motion as Metaphor and Metaphysics in Animated Sport

This essay addresses the relationship between sporting practice and its representation in animated film. It constitutes one of the first investigations into this area, and consequently seeks to define its historical and theoretical terrain. This is achieved by exploring sport-orientated animation in a variety of national contexts throughout the history of animation, and in defining a set of aesthetic criteria that relate and bind sport and animation as processes and producers of meaning and affect.