Character Expression/Pose Series Using Photo Characters?

Sometimes the old ways are the best - I think I would grab a camera and a willing person and have a fun afternoon being creative!

Choose a desk near a window for lighting/colour balance.

If you want to swap race and age, then just do the same location with a few different people.

I would check out Vyond. it's an AI animation program that has an excellent feature to create what you want. They are adding to their Avatar colllection so you could have the same character in various expressions. I have used Vyond alot and create a scenario video and imported into Storyline with no problem. 

The more specific one's request is for certain character traits and expressions, the more likely it is that filling the request will require licensing characters from a company that focuses on that service, buying images from a stock photo agency, or paying for a custom photo shoot. Or, as PeterRoberts536​ suggested, taking the photos yourself (though that still might incur expenses, such as hiring models, renting lights, etc.). 

While Articulate does provide some cut-out characters, that's not the focus of their business. In other words, it's a limited selection.

Here are two sites that license cut-out characters:

• https://elearningart.com/
• https://www.elblearning.com/create-learning/asset-library/cutout-people

Note: Cut-out characters from other sources are put into Storyline via Insert > Picture (not Insert > Character). For Rise, you could use photo software or even PowerPoint to combine a character and a background into one image. 

Use any background you want behind cut-out characters. For one of my clients, I took photos of their building when I was there for a meeting, and used those behind cut-out characters. 

Thanks for all the comments regarding generating various character poses. lots of good ideas! After working through it, I've come up with an approach that works for me. It involves the use of AI video generation. The good thing is that you get a different result every time! At some point, you might find something you like.

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What you need: 1) pro level account at freepik.com (I love Freepik), 2) Adobe Photoshop

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1. On Freepik, ask it to generate a video using a descriptive prompt. Here's what I used:

"Close-up shot: A man is intensely speaking on the phone while sitting at a desk with a laptop. The background is white. First he is happy. Then he is angry. Then he is frustrated.

Keep doing this until you get a good range of expressions that you are happy with.

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2. Export the video to your desktop.

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3. Using Photoshop go to file > Import > Video frames to layers

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4. In import dialogue box, be sure to select "From beginning to end"

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5. In import dialog box, be sure to limit it to perhaps every 24 frames (assuming video was rendered at 24 FPS). This should result in you getting a new layer for every one second in the video.

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6. View each frame individually to find the frames that represent the expressions you want. 

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7. When you find a frame you want, use the photoshop magic wand to delete the white background.

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8. Save layer as a dot PNG file with transparency.

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9. insert the background you wish behind the image.

Here is a link to the video that was created by Freepik:
https://twelsh.net/video-man-beard.mp4

Here are a couple of the Images rendered with the white background, and then the final images. These demo images are a bit sloppy - I did not take much time to adjust the magic want values or  clean up the images, such as the edges of the man, etc. You can use the blur tool or feathering in Photoshop to clean up the edges so the character does not have a glow around it. Of course, you can process the resulting images as necessary to match your pallete/style/etc.