Hello!

I'm a streamer and I don't like to show my face (social anxiety), but I want my viewers to be able to connect with someone. So I had an idea of representing myself as a pixelated character. Something that won't really offend anyone and is adorably likable. My voice on stream is very animated, so I'm really hoping I can find an artist that can really connect the voice with the character to make something that lasts in the viewers mind/connect with.

I've already come up with the character, have rough art done of how I wish him to look, and am looking to start a paid project for this. With that, I have no idea where to go from here. Essentially, I need to find a way to get his full character created and fleshed out; a full set of facial expressions, a full set of animated emotes, and other miscellaneous things that I'm sure I haven't even considered.

The end goal is for my character to be on screen, with idle emotes. Eventually I want to get voice and facial recognition software set up so that when I talk, so does the character. I also will be setting up various macro sets so when I push a button, an animation plays. Example: Something happens in game and I get angry, I press a button, and the character on screen plays an animated angry emote.

Essentially, I'm looking to turn this pixelated character into a puppet that represents myself.

1) Where do I start?
I'm not sure how much something like this could cost in the end so I can't start with an estimated ballpark idea of how much I should be paying. Or even how long I should expect something like this to take?

2) Terms for the types of artists?
I'm not sure what exactly the type of artist I'm looking for is called, so I can't do further research on it. I'm extremely ignorant when it comes to the creation of pixel art and I don't want to offend anyone or ask for the wrong type of artist and waste anyone's time/money.

That's all I can think of for now as far as questions go, thanks for taking the time to read!
-Toasty