Creating a character and the world they live in can bring many feelings, the way their life turns out is completely up to the creator. Junior Ashley Setzer has been creating her own characters, deciding how another fictional person lives day to day. Setzer started becoming serious about drawing her characters in April 2021, starting with her now favorite character Akari. She has always drawn characters here and there but didn’t become really focused until she got the idea for Akari.

“On April Fool’s Day the Roblox server added cat ears and a cat tail to the avatars and I was like ‘Oh cool, this avatar looks cute,’ and so I sketched it in my sketchbook and the next day I was like ‘Wait a minute, I can make a character out of this,’” Setzer said. 

Setzer decided to make her favorite character Akari a brother named Alex. Little did she know in just a few months she would meet junior Alex Jacks, someone similar to her character.

“Our personality is similar even the way we dress is similar because their character wears jeans and sweatshirts and I wear jeans and sweatshirts all the time,” Jacks said.

Akari is somewhat based off of Setzer in real life. Personality wise, they are kind of similar, with Akari being a little more sarcastic. Whenever situations get tough, Setzer likes to put herself in her character’s shoes.

“I’m normally really nervous when it comes to tests and Akari however, she’s like really confident and kind of courageous and I’d just imagine ‘okay wait, calm down Ash, it’s like you’re now Akari,’ and normally when I do that, all my fear goes away as if I’m acting,” Setzer said.