Every portrait at this desk is judged by three questions, in order, and the order does the work. First: is she the woman on the card — age, hair, build, face, signature, line by line? Second: is the craft clean — hands, light, edges, the plain surfaces plain? Third: does the portrait have a job — cover, feed, first frame for video — or is it merely pleasant?
A portrait that fails the first question is a cull, however beautiful; beauty was never the card’s department. One that passes the first and fails the second goes to the editor for one precise change at 21 credits, or is culled if the fault is structural. One that passes both and has no job is kept private and unfitted — finishing credits, upscalers at 61 and from 101, are spent only on portraits with somewhere to go.
The test takes under a minute per frame, and it is deliberately unglamorous. Its entire value is that it is the same test, in the same order, at every sitting — the frame does not move, so the judging does not wander.
Three questions, one card, no exceptions for a pretty face. That is how a wall of portraits stays a wall of the same woman.