Tutorial: Text Highlighter / Redacter ala "The Diplomat"

Did you know you can use After Effects expressions to dynamically rewrite your mask shapes on the fly? In this tutorial, I'll show you a cool experssion (createPath) which lets you use code (and maths) to draw masks and paths! This means we can set a starting point, give it a length and AE will create a line for us.

I came up with this because I was tired of trying to move or adjust path points. This way, I just use a point control and a slider and I'm done. But then, thanks to laziness, I also added code to have the line draw based on the layer's in-point, so I don't even have to add keyframes. All bundled up into a preset.