In Which I Learn About After Effects Keyframing and am Befuddled by Resolutions

Okay, so here's the deal: for the first hour of this assignment I spent my time organizing this lovely picture below:

I'm really happy with how it came out for the short time that I worked on it. It's really sketchy, but it's a rough assignment anyway, so I went with scope rather than minute detail.

After finishing, I then began to move stuff around like I was in ToonBoom, expected the program to interpret my movements as insta-keyframes and go from there. No dice. After spending 30 minutes (foolishly) moving stuff around, I went to watch my progress. As the thing moved forward, I sighed. My piece wasn't moving a single inch. After being told by a class mate I was doing it wrong and was corrected- thanks by the way Amanda- I ended up finishing the movie. I then figured out to make a test-render and rendered it out.

And whatta ya know, my piece looked jankasaurus (to quote Jill.) The resolutions are mega choppy, which frankly confuses me, because the original files are really quite large and the pixels she be getting HARDER to see. Well. I'll ask Jill about it tomorrow I guess.