Digital character reference with a yellow background of the 63 year old Artie. Artie is a small handsewn aardvark toy feltling with light brown fabric skin and light blue button eyes and they go by they/them pronouns. On the left shows a fullbody of Artie with a hand on their hip. On the right shows four expressions which show starting from top left clockwise: Artie happily giving a thumbs up, Artie worried with their ears drooping down, Artie holding their shoulder whilst looking frustrated and peeved, and Artie from the front with their snout at the viewer as they go 'sneef snorf'.

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Next we have Artie! The oldest in the main cast, they're a handsewn little aardvark plushie made by a grandma for her grandson, and now is a member of the family as an elder! They're an old grump but they have a big heart still.

(backstory)
In the 60s, when the Feltling Phenomena was starting, a kindly Ghanaian immigrant in the UK handsewn a little aardvark toy based on the aardvarks she'd see in her childhood. She gifted this toy to her then young grandson, and to the family's surprise, the little toy could walk and interact with them!

Named Artie by the grandson, both of them would grow up together as siblings, and as the grandson treated Artie more and more as a fellow sibling, Artie would develop as such, being now just another member of the family.

However, life was not easy for this family, due to being immigrants of colour in the UK, they faced a lot of hardships with discrimination. Artie being a animal based Feltling without the ability to speak (due to never being built with a mouth), also faced their own hardships of being objectified and barely understood, and so mostly stuck with their family.

Whilst not tending to their family, Artie takes small jobs of babysitting for children and acting as a therapy and comfort toy, they take these jobs very seriously and are very proud of the work they do.

However, Artie still feels like they can still do more in life, but feels there isn't a lot of options for them due to the many hardships they have faced for what they are. They struggle to form any new connections that isn't their family due to previous experiences leading them to just get hurt. They are only a little mute stuffed animal after all, what else is there for one?