Virtual Assistant Character Design

We need somebody to design a character for a Virtual Agent (VA) which will be integrated into our websites.

The Virtual Agent will be the personal face to a knowledge base of answers. The successful candidate will provide the final character design with 5 images showing different expressions.

The Virtual agent is a woman in her early 30's and should appear to be approachable and welcoming. The design of the character needs to be clear that she’s not real, yet, as the imagery of our website is based around photos and real people’s images she should not be a full on cartoon. This could be designed using illustrator, photoshop or a 3d program.

Here are a few examples of characters similar to what we are looking for:
http://www.pkr.com/en/support/
http://itunes.apple.com/app/chat-practice-your-english/id408256375?mt=8
http://www.davi.in/

The deadline is quite tight - we’d like to see an initial character mock up by Monday 2nd April so that we approve the ongoing work on the further expressions, ready for final delivery on Monday 9th April.