You should not use AE in your first project unless you want to use it for gradients or simple colorgrading.
All your 'rotoscoping-efforts' will only consume your time and result in poor results.
Finish your first project and learn from it.
You want it to be perfect: that's understandable.
But you'll learn more in the same time if you don't spend months in AE.
Spend it on something new.
Otherwise I predict you will still not be happy with the result and start questions about Maya to replace the actors with 3D-characters.
(For your interest: I started using AE after a dozen projects. And the first few times I used it, I used it for motion graphics only. After about 2 years in artschool and quite some lessons I really started to use it. Before that I was busy learning to shoot, edit and tell a story. Most of the times I use it as a creative tool. If I fix something it's the color of light in a window or making industrial plants in the background of green flat Dutch meadows disappear or stupid logo's and stains.)