I think there is a slick way to make this easier that would also make other clever things possible in Doodly. If the program actually had another character / text layer in the timeline, you could write or draw something in the other layer and mark it to go away after a period of time (another feature repeatedly asked for here in this forum). When it disappears, everything is in tact behind it - a bit like a "windowing" function. High end graphics programs have this. They also have a check box to make the layer appear and disappear so that you can see things behind it. In my graphics program if the layer is not checked "visible" when you export the rest if the image, it isn't part of the export.