Series drift is usually blamed on the model. Look at the desk instead. The character was described from memory at every job, and memory edits as it goes: “jet-black bob with a blunt fringe” in frame one becomes “sleek dark hair” by frame four, and the audience watches a stranger quietly take her place. The repair is clerical, not technical. Write the character down once, on a card you paste rather than retype.
Five fixed lines, always in order
A working card holds five things. Age — a number, and at this desk a mature one. Hair — colour, length and one habitual style. Build — two or three words, no more. Face — one or two details that endure every crop. Signature — the stud, the mark, the detail that survives a tight frame. Everything else belongs to the changing line: outfit, room, hour, light, pose. Changing lines are meant to change. Card lines are not.
Two habits keep a card honest. Lines are stated plainly and positively — concrete descriptions survive generation, while adjectives like “stunning” are reinterpreted at every attempt. And the card is versioned: when she is deliberately changed, save the new text as version two with a date, so an old set can still be remade exactly as it was.
Working from the card
Production becomes a calm routine. Pair the card with changing lines that share one setting and one light, generate at the standard model’s 6-credit cost, and keep the best third. Spend on repairs, transfers and upscales only after the cull. When a frame returns off character, the cause is almost always visible on the card: a changing line contradicted a card line, or a line was too vague to hold her. Both are fixed on paper, not by hunting through settings.
What a card cannot do
It cannot hold a character who was never decided. Decide her on paper first. The card is not where the imagination happens; it is where the imagination is kept, frame after frame.