manipulating animation in after effects

I placed all 3 animations into after effects however i came across a problem straigh away. When i put all 3 layers on, at least one of them get hidden by the other so i need a tool to try and crop the each animation sequence.

As you can see i could get all 3 panel to be view on the screenn

I eventually overcame the problem using a new tool to me called the mask tool, essentially it allows you to crop a piece of animation so you can tell it which parts you want to be seen.

The yellow box indicates where i've cutout the animation, it now allows all three panels to be seen.

Now i could show all 3 of animation panels in the same screen

I like this, however i want a delay on each animation so one gun goes off right after the other.

to do this i inserted the first image of the animation at the beginning and made it run slightly longer as i went down the panels, this meant the top panel's animation started first then middle then bottom, to make sure each panel didn't turn to black i added the last frame on the end to run to end.

Im really happy with the finally result really bring it to life