# Mask **URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/mask/140820 **Category:** Uncategorized **Created:** [March 14, 2005, 6:14pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/mask/140820 "2005-03-14T18:14:26Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Page:** 1
### Author: ![Tracy981](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@Tracy981](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Tracy981) #### Post date: [March 14, 2005, 6:14pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/mask/140820/1 "2005-03-14T18:14:26Z")
Question for all you… I’m not to experienec with masks so if someone can point me into the right direction that would greatly be appreciated… on my root i have an external swf being loaded into the stage. when you refresh, a random swf will be loaded again, etc., etc., now wut i want to be able to do is have a mask on my root that will mask the external swfs. so 2 questions… 1- making a mask, is it better to use duplicate movieclip or animate everything (ultimately im going to have shapes form the image) 2- how do i go about scripting im not asking for people to just give me the answer, but point me into the right direction so i can study it… thanks Tracy 🙂