[Amanda Russell]

Thank you so much for taking the time. I did figure out a fix with one of my colleagues that will work. Added+animated a mask for the areas of the comp i wanted to affect over time (leaving the default settings to the mask other than the path animation) plus adding a fill to the comp layer and, in the timeline, twirling down Effects > Fill > Compositing Options, tapping the + to add a compositing Reference and making sure the reference is set to Mask 1. That way, the mask doesn’t actually mask all the visuals, but applies only to compositing the Fill effect layer to the areas I’ve designated.