i love to play with blender, but i am not an expert !
i am looking a type effect : like an ink drop revealing an object. imagine a white object in white environment with no cast shadows, then an ink drop revealing the object.
You can either generate vertex paint or you can render to a series of bitmaps.
There are properties to make the paint “flow” downwards or to “spread” on the object which makes it look like it is perfect for what you want to do.
However, I have never used it before for anything else than testing purposes so perhaps someone else with more experience can tell you more.
The following video demonstrates its abilities quite well: