Creators catalogue their stills without thinking — numbered sets, consistent characters, covers matched to contents — then treat video as weather: brief a scene in text, accept whatever blows in, wonder why the clip stars a stranger. The fix is to give video the same clerical treatment as stills. A clip becomes an entry with a parent: the keyframe it was animated from, filed first and approved before a single video credit is spent.
The entry format for a clip
A keyframe entry has three parts. The keyframe itself: a still produced against the character’s entry sheet, composed with room to move — subject placed with a direction to turn or walk toward, background interest that rewards a few seconds of attention. The motion line: one stage direction, written down beside the keyframe before rendering — “turns slowly toward the window light and smiles” — so a failed render gets a revised line, not a superstitious re-roll. And the spec: duration, resolution and destination, decided up front because video pricing follows both.
Why the order matters
The expensive failures in video are character failures, and they are cheapest to catch at the still stage, where a frame costs 6 credits instead of a video job. By the time a clip is rendered, the only open question is motion — the question video models are genuinely good at. Judging follows the same order: watch the finished clip once for the character (does she stay herself through the turn?) and once for the joins (hands, hair, background edges), then file it beside its keyframe with the spec recorded.
A list that includes motion
Run this way for a month and something compounding happens: teasers visibly match the sets they promote, loops reuse proven keyframes, and the video section of the catalogue reads as a chapter of the same book instead of a spin-off. That is all “professional” ever means in practice — the same record-keeping, applied to every format on the list.