shape partly in background, not visable when animating + how to extract a shape to layer

I'm completely new to After Effects, so I'm following a small course to get somewhat familiar with the program. There's a lot of now just do it yourself in this course, and I keep having issues, which the video of the course doesn't seem to have at all or isn't addressing.

For this course we have Motion Tools 2.1.2 in use. This extention doesn't seem to be working most of the time, and you have to restart AE everytime to properly use it. The tool lets you extract a layer shape inside another shape and makes a new layer or item of it. Which is nessacery to do when you want to use cc bend it appearently. The narrator in this course says AE has an easy option to do this aswell, but doesnt say how to. I suppose its nice to know how to, when the extention keeps on failing. Does anyone know how to, been searching a lot on forums, but I guess its either common sense on how to, or people don't do this. Perhaps I'm describing the problem or thing I want it to do completely wrong. Anyways I hope someone gets this explaination.

And then there is one other issue I keep having which I'd love to know how to fix. 

So there are shapes that I use that are halfway out of the workarea and halfway in. Somehow, while using bend it or transform - rotation, it just uses the shape inside the workarea, and so leaves out the complete shape. Thus leaving a blank and cut off shape while it animates. Is there no easy option to animate the entire shape, inside and outside the workarea, why does it only animates the shape inside? It isnt a bend it start and end point problem which I also recently found out is a thing.

Hopefully someone can explain these things to me and know how to solve them. Thanks!