Every maker keeps frames they should have culled, because the only judge applied was a feeling. A small fixed set of checks is stricter and faster: five of them, run the same way every time, against the record you wrote before the session began.
The five checks
1. Likeness. Is she the character on the record — same hair, same face, same signature — or a near relative? Judge against the record, not against the previous frame, because drift compounds quietly.
2. Hands. Hands first, then joints, then anything the pose bends. A frame can survive soft detail; it cannot survive anatomy the eye trips over at thumbnail size.
3. Light. One source, behaving consistently across skin, fabric and background. Light that disagrees with itself is the most common reason a strong frame feels vaguely wrong.
4. Edges. Hair against background, fingers against props, lace against skin. Clean edges let a frame sit beside others without announcing how it was made.
5. Purpose. Does the frame do the one job it was briefed for? A beautiful frame that does the wrong job fails here, and rightly.
The threshold that saves money
Score each check out of two. A frame needs eight of ten to earn finishing spend — an edit at 21 credits, a swap at 26, an upscale at 61. Below eight, it goes back to the generator at the 6-credit standard cost, where correction is cheapest. Keep the scores with the set, dated; a month later they will tell you which habit actually improved.