Quality and Sampling issues – Adobe After Effects – Creative COW

Hi y’all,

Quick question. I’m a big Pixel-art sprite kinda guy. I have some sprites of this character (which you might know from 90’s pc gaming) running. The source is quite small, so I scaled it up a few 100% and gave it a Nearest-Neighbour treatment with the Quality and Sampling options that After Effects provides you with.

This is what it should look like:

But when I render it, doesn’t matter how or what settings I adjust, it keeps getting out blurred. It totally ignores the Quality and Sampling. Does anyone know how to quick fix this? I have this problem over and over. I know I can adjust my source by upscaling it in Photoshop with the nearest neighbour scaling, but then I have to adjust the whole thing again, because I worked with masks. There should be an option for AE to render this the way it shows in the project right?
I tried to google it, all I can find is tips about how the quality and sampling works (not how to render it) and what the optimal render settings are for normal stuff.

Thank you in advance.