Most consent failures are not malice. They are missing pages. A collaboration made sense in a chat thread in spring; the images are selling by summer; by autumn, nobody can produce the message where the use of a likeness was agreed. Gardeners keep record books for the same reason studios keep releases: memory is not a filing system. Keep the record small, plain, and opened before the first generation — not reconstructed after a question arrives.
The smallest sufficient record
For every real person whose face, body or photographs enter the work, file four things together. Identification — who they are, and how their adulthood was verified. Scope — what may be made: stills, clips, grafts, undress transformations, stated in words rather than assumed. Term — how long the permission runs, and whether it can be withdrawn. The agreement itself — a signed release, or at minimum a written exchange in which the scope is stated and accepted, saved as a file and not left inside a chat application.
Habits that keep the record honest
- Scope is literal. Consent to appear in clothed stills is not consent to undress transformations. A new use earns a new line in the book, agreed before the job runs.
- Withdrawal is real. If a collaborator withdraws, production stops and published pieces come down. A record that cannot execute a withdrawal is not a consent record at all.
- Fictional characters keep a different file. There is no person to consent — but keep the cultivar sheet and the first frames. “This performer is fictional” is a claim you may one day be asked to show your working for.
- Records rest with the work. The folder for a set holds its consent page beside the finished files, so an audit never becomes an excavation.
When in doubt, plant nothing
The arithmetic is uneven. One undocumented set can cost an account, a storefront and a name. The set you declined costs a week. TokenSGMap’s rules follow the same arithmetic — uploads and grafts require adulthood and consent, and moderation may ask to see the page in the book. Having it ready is what professional looks like in a garden city: the paperwork planted in rows, like everything else.