Would After Effects be my best option for this style of animation?

I'm making a collage-esque animation from different images I've downloaded and edited with Photoshop, and then laid out in Illustrator. I followed a tutorial online for bringing images from Illustrator into After Effects (with each element being their own layer), but nothing shows up.

Is this because I'm using elements composed of image files instead of vector graphics created in Illustrator? Would it make more sense for me to save each image element as a file and bring all of those files into AE?

And finally, is this even the best program for this? I used AE a few times in school, but it's been a few years, and I'm unfamiliar with other animation programs.

https://preview.redd.it/kpejttg7gkof1.png?width=1506&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b03b669930117230618bca3dd1c8e80142aee82