A credit pack fails the way productions fail: not in one extravagant purchase, but in finishing prices paid for exploratory work. The studio prices are a ladder — 6, 21, 26, 41, 61 — and the producer’s whole craft is climbing it in order, never skipping rungs.
Know your anchor
The standard frame costs 6, and the daily check-in pays 6. Hold every other price against that unit. A 1,000-credit pack is roughly 166 standard frames, or 24 premium frames, or 16 upscales. Which of those a pack “is” depends entirely on the order you spend it in — the same pack is a season of drafting or a weekend of finishing.
The spending order
Draft at 6. Composition, wardrobe, weather — everything uncertain is settled at standard prices, where a mistake costs one frame. Repair at 21. A near-right frame with a local defect is an editor job, not a re-render: a third of the premium price, original kept. Recast at 26 when identity, and only identity, is wrong. Premium at 41 for the frames that must carry weight, once their composition is proven. Upscale at 61, last — and only for frames nothing else about will change, because an edit after an upscale throws the upscale away.
The check-in is a salary
Treat the daily 6 as production income for sketchbook days: brief tests, wardrobe variants, lighting experiments. Banked across a month it is 180 credits of exploration that never touched the pack. Producers are not misers — the ledger’s point is the opposite. Spend freely at the right rung, and the pack is still there at the rung where spending matters.