How do I make After Effects "draw a still image?

[MB3Official]

So back in 2013 I did created a countdown video for a church I interned forand I cant find the tutorial I used to make it "live draw" the image for me... or a single tutoral for it at all. heres the countdown so you can see what I'm talking about. my countdown video Serously How do I do this? I orgininally made the video in premiere pro, but I do also have after effects and I was told this looks more like a job for after effects

[Mylenium]

Any "logo reveal/ logo drawing/ sketch reveal" tutorial will be appropriate. No magic involved. You extract the black pixel art and then reveal it using animated masks, masks with strokes used as track mattes, simple wipes where possible, possibly other effects that manipulate the content of a layer like Scribble. And of course it's all done by strategically splitting everything in multiuple layers and tackling things one step at a time. A simple 3 second web search turned up this for instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpJfBtsGrw

Mylenium

[MB3Official]

But what I did wasn't revealing anything. It took the still image and made a line drawing of it; and then I had the original image as a new clip and used the dip to white transition. I also remember not being able to choose how or what direction it drew it in; like an etch a sketch with a mind of its own.I may have used photo shop to make it look like an etch a sketch but I didn't choose how it was drawn

[MB3Official]

I've seen this but it's not what I did; I didn't get to choose how it was drawn and it added a lot more detail in the drawing of it than I would've done at the age of 17. But I can't find the tutorial I used either; it started with the video drawing an older man in a field and then transitioned to him explaining how you can make the program do it

[ShiveringCactus]

I think the modern way to do it is logo reveal, but if memory serves me correctly, ten years ago there was a lot of focus on things like Write-On and Gradient Wipe for drawing images.  Write On is very time consuming, but Gradient wipe was relatively quick if you had a steady hand.  These days using Auto-Trace to generate a mask path and then using a Shape layer (or the Stroke effect, I suppose) would get you there with a lot less hassle.

[Mylenium]

Sorry, but based on such vague memories we really can't help you. Of course you could create some sort of randomness by combining effects in AE like a gradient wipe with custom gradient maps, but that would not replace any advanced "auto-wipe" plug-ins you may have used back then. Of course such tools exist where you only define a few parameters and then the algorithm does the rest, but again, in AE you will need to create the "intelligence" yourself by structuring your work with masks, creating gradated mattes, using wipes and creatively employing other effects. At best I could imagine that your effect could get some life of its own by using Shatter, Card Wipe and a few others, but even those require input maps. Whatever you did back then simply eludes us if you can't name any of the specific effects or steps involved.

Mylenium