 The Sinking of the Lusitania took twenty @-@ two months to complete . McCay had assistance from his neighbor , artist John Fitzsimmons , and from Cincinnati cartoonist William Apthorp " Ap " Adams , who took care of layering the cels in proper sequence for shooting . Fitzsimmons was responsible for a sequence of waves , sixteen frames to be cycled over McCay 's drawings . McCay provided illustrations during the day for the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst , and spent his off hours at home drawing the cels for the film , which he took to Vitagraph Studios to be photographed . 
