Angela, one of our recent stars. $18 for her files and 100% worth it.
You can use clipart (and if you do, check out Tom Kuhlman’s now-classic post on clipart editing). For learning agents, though, one or two on-screen personas get a lot of focus and need to represent a wide range of behaviors, so clipart may not cut it.
For my money/time, I buy pre-made illustrations. The regular stock photo sites have illustrations, but the best collection I’ve found for learning agents is cartoonsolutions.com.
Most of their characters are elearning-appropriate and they come with various poses and mouths (meant to animate speech, but I also use them as facial expressions). I buy Flash versions and use Illustrator to edit them for stills. Add audio from a popular CSR, and you’re golden.
I’m still looking for more collections — any recommendations?