"TVP is a fantastic program," he boasts. "What helped both of us with the transition is that we started as beta testers when TVP had just one layer. And very quickly as soon as we asked for something, then the developers gave it to us. They were eager to make this a program for professional animators. Neither of them ever animated, and I believed that we were the first professionals that used the program. It was a very productive relationship. And so it was easy for us to adapt to it because most of it came from our needs. And then several other animators came on and there were discussions on the beta forum between us and how we work each one differently and these features should be made to work for all of us.

"The light table was crucial: it was just a button that you could turn on or off and it showed you 50% transparency, which was way too much. That's not dim enough to use as an onion skin. The first thing that I asked for was to bring it down a lot so I could start working immediately, and they said they would make it in increments. So we had a choice of three variations. And then that led to sliders and then that led to 10 neighboring frames on each side. We still got a brand new 'off pegging' feature of the light table."

Still, there would be no Ackerley without Christopher Plummer's warm and eccentric performance. But when producer Norman Twain suggested Plummer, it turned out that Paul was unfamiliar with him, but is delighted with the results. "

"It was difficult for him because he had to lead the film; it's almost wall-to-wall talk," he admits. Plummer didn't want to read Ackerley or read about him. He even declined to see a few minutes of the film that had already been done. He had his own vision. For an actor like Plummer, pictures mean nothing.

Interestingly, his favorite moment is when Acklerly has a good laugh early on. "It's awfully hard to draw a laughing person to make them look realistic."

Now, the 74-year-old, who was Czechoslovakia's first indie animation producer, and has made more than 200 films, is embarking on another feature about a famous man: "It's the story of Joshua Slocum, who was the first man to circumnavigate the world alone in a sailboat in the late 1800s."

It's about how the world changed around Slocum. And, in keeping with the subject matter, Fierlinger is considering distributing on the internet, among other possibilities. There's never been a question about his adaptability.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.