Tips for creating a custom character with many states

I am working on an interactive comic to allow language learners to acquire French while reading an exciting story - an update version of the musketeers. For this I would like to have my custom characters (rendered in 3d software) with multiple states that are the emotions. I plan to build the character on a separate resource slice and then add them in to scenes where they appear. My questions are...

• Is there a quick way to load all the images into one "button" with the states defined by filename (rather than 1 by 1 taking forever)?
• Is there such a thing as too many states? My characters have about 24 different positions for their conversations and will have another 24 for action scenes. 

Thanks for taking time to read my inquiry. I would love to hear from those of you with more articulate experience...i.e. everyone.