masking out a handdrawn letter on paper.

[Joey Foreman]

Track the motion of the x’s, then attach new layers which just have the texture of the paper. You can clone the texture in AE or Photoshop, easily, since the paper has such a uniform texture.

Heck, you may not even need to track to the motion, if there isn’t much. You could animate the layers by hand to match the movement.
And actually, since there’s so much space around the x’s, you could make the clone layers large enough that they cover any movement.

You could also just duplicate the main layer, draw a mask set to subtract around each x, and offset the layer below until you have blank paper showing underneath.
Lots of ways to do it.

[Joey Foreman]

Aw, I really overthought that one. Just make a still from the frame and clone out the x’s and be done with it.
Running on fumes today.

[Joey Foreman]

Unless you want the slight motion, so that it doesn’t look like a still. Then do one of the earlier suggestions.

Going to bed…

[Martin Reigel]

thanks for all the help!

[Martin Reigel]

i ended up using the clone tool. I have never used it in after effects. worked great

[Joey Foreman]

Cool. I love figuring out a new tool and getting to put it to practical use.