Type Project 7

So I've come to find that all the features of text in After Effects is almost overwhelming in how vast and complicated some of them are. I noticed it was much easier to play around until you found a happy accident then it was to come up with an idea and try to execute it using the little knowledge I have on how text works in After Effects. My biggest problem was that even though I knew what I wanted to do I have no idea how to use the effects to make said ideas. I would just feel lost and overwhelmed. I couldn't really think of how to look for web tutorials considering I didn't know what I was looking for would be called. Things got really annoying when I came into the problem of simply not being able to type on a mask path. For some reason when I set up a text layer and set it to a mask path it would be off set from the path as its clearly trying to follow the direction but isn't set properly. I tried changing anchor points and group anchor points, changing the grouping from "word" to "character", and countlessly reseting the first margin. It just wouldn't work so I decided to use the obsolete path type effect, which doesn't allow for as much control but in this case gets the job done. Many times throughout this project I had to just abandon using text tricks and resort to messing with basic position and scale tools. I'm sure that there is some way to do what I did by hand with the tools by using the text effects but I haven't found it yet. The unfortunate problem with this assignment is is that mine looks completely unfinished (and is) and doesn't make much since because I only did the words hope, real. and reality. I basically only made about a third of my whole project. I completely underestimated how difficult using text would be on this project.