 The film opens with a live @-@ action prologue in which McCay busies himself studying a picture of the Lusitania as a model for his film @-@ in @-@ progress . Intertitles boast of McCay as " the originator and inventor of Animated Cartoons " , and of the 25 @,@ 000 drawings needed to complete the film . McCay is shown working with a group of anonymous assistants on " the first record of the sinking of the Lusitania " . 
