fan works in the ap portfolio?

the ap people are very loose and awful about describing what they mean with copyright. let me walk you through my idea for a piece and ask whether it would violate guidelines. teachers please have input, or students who included fanart in previous years and how the ap treated it. 

my sustained investigation is on my relationship with gender, and how i can better understand my own gender through expression via artwork.

im wondering on including a sketch sheet of basically like, emulated character designs (with my own style of course, my own line quality and color choices --just basically drawing these outputs in my own style), because this is an important way ive explored gender. like, animal crossing in particular has become major during quarantine bc of its elimination of gender and replacement with just Style, and toying around with my gender expression in that space has been really fun and productive for me and my mental health. i tend to do a lot of sketch process images of characters, most of which are doodles on the side of my homework or notes....so i wanted to kind of include a bunch of different sketches to reflect different views of my identity and different ways i can express just me through like, video games and other character creation. im ramble, im so sorrytl;dr -- can i draw my animal crossing character (in my style ofc) in a character study sketch sheet for process work for a submission?