Hasta La Motion!

Hi folks, I’m currently working on a project that involves Chinese characters (hanzi) within some of the graphics. I am trying to find a work around to being able to do them as Write-On style. There will be lots of characters to do and heres the bummer each character will have to be done seperatly, its not possible as it would be in English to render the whole alphabet then swap letters around to make words (except where the same character is used of course ) the chinese ‘alphabet’ has about 4 thousand characters of which about 450 I will need to do . And to complicate things even more the order of the strokes which make up the character (sometimes a many as 12 but on average about 7 or 8) has to follow the rules of chinese writing,which say what strokes are written first and which follow.
You get the idea of the size of the task. I was thinking along the lines of chinese fonts and doing a reveal with masks but again the stroke order on a significant number of characters means it wouldnt work. Perhaps I could use that technique for the ones that could be done but Im still stuck with the rest. Im hoping someone can come up with a workable suggestion as the alternative is doing them stroke by stroke character by character with Paint in Digital Fusion and Chinese caligraphy is an art withing itself and im not sure I could learn in a week or two what the Chinese take years to master.
Should mention its a 2D job.
Any Chinese members come across this before? Any ideas, experience ??