Artwork and Sprite Animation for iPhone & Android Game

I am developing a surfing game for the iPhone and Android platform and need to enlist some artistic talent. The first step in the project is to enhance the prototype and develop the main character. Starting from a prototype and artist concept, will need to re-create the main character sprite (a surfer) in topographical view, and animate it for various motions and states. There will be around 5 different motions that need to be animated (each requiring ~5 frames), so we are looking at a total of around 25 frames. The sprite size is 64x24 pixels and we are trying to look as natural as possible (not too cartoon-like). There is more to be done further down the road and I would like to keep the same animator if the work is good.