Can I save a AE loop and re-import it into AE?

Hi there,

I'm new to AE so I hope this isn't a dumb question. I watched the total training videos but they didn't go beyond the very basics. Doesn't seem to be any good online tutorials that I can find.

I've grabbed 8 frames from a quicktime movie and traced them in illustrator using livetrace. I think imported those native AI files into AE and assembled them into 16 frames, which makes a loop.

I want to use this loop as the introduction to my movie as I roll in some credits and a logo - maybe something like 20 seconds.

I figured maybe I could save out this loop and re-import it back into AE as one loop/movie instead of the whole group of native AI files - but I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it, because I'll still need to "loop my loop" as it were for 20 seconds or so.

Hope this is making sense, I'm not quite sure what the best way to proceed is. I'm assuming duping my 16 frame loop say 10 times in the timeline to get my intro animation isn't the best idea, and I'm concerned about the file size getting really big. But I don't know how else to go about it.

Thanks!