 McCay 's self @-@ financed Lusitania took nearly two years to complete . With the assistance of John Fitzsimmons and Cincinnati cartoonist William Apthorp " Ap " Adams , McCay spent his off hours drawing the film on sheets of cellulose acetate ( or " cels " ) with white and black India ink at McCay 's home . It was the first film McCay made using cels , a technology animator Earl Hurd had patented in 1914 ; it saved work by allowing dynamic drawings to be made on one or more layers , which could be laid over a static background layer , relieving animators of the tedium of retracing static images onto drawing after drawing . McCay had the cels photographed at the Vitagraph studios . The film was naturalistically animated , and made use of dramatic camera angles that would have been impossible in a live @-@ action film . 
