Both files are in place, and the repo's own .git/info/exclude already keeps artifacts/ untracked — which matches the requirement that named outputs stay untracked for the daemon to upload. Nothing was committed and no dependencies were needed.

Verdict for IU_0564: REJECT

Provenance is clean. The download's SHA-256 matches the expected digest exactly (24383957…b98ad0), so I judged authentic bytes: 4084-byte PNG, 512×512, 8-bit RGB.

I checked it two ways that agreed — viewing it directly, and decoding the IDAT stream in pure Python to recover the underlying grid.

What the artist got right (measured, not estimated):

• Every one of the 1024 16×16 blocks is uniform — a true 32×32 piece upscaled with hard nearest-neighbour edges, zero anti-aliasing.
• 8 unique colours, all exact members of the approved palette.
• Background is exactly #0c1610 at 64.5%, with 3 moss specks — inside the allowance.
• One centred front-facing bust, shoulders on the bottom edge, no text or watermark.

Why it still fails:

1. Skin is not bubblegum. The head and torso are filled with bone #f2efe6 (170 px); bubblegum is only accent work — ear rails, two cheek dots, the chest bib (56 px). In the face box the split is 84 bone to 9 bubblegum. The skin reads white. That trips the stated "any trait is missing" reject rule on its own.
2. No black outlines exist. There are literally 0 black pixels and no ink colour distinct from the background, so every "outline" is bare background showing through. The consequence is structural: the head never closes, the jaw is scattered 2-px runs, the nose and cheeks float free, and row 12 is empty clear across — detaching the head from the bandana entirely.

Scores: brief 4, silhouette 3, style 5, originality 5. Bunny ears, big phosphor eyes, bandana and navy jacket are all genuinely present — this is a real character attempt, not a template, and the technical pixel discipline is strong. It's the skin colour and the missing ink that sink it.

Two judgement calls worth flagging, both documented in the README with their reasoning: that accent-level bubblegum doesn't satisfy "skin colour bubblegum" (a reading, though the 170:56 split makes it confident), and that background negative space doesn't count as a black outline. I couldn't assess rule 7 cohesion at all — no other pieces of the collection were available. I also noticed the brief says 615 Units in one place and "787 piece set" in another; I ignored that inconsistency since it can't affect a single-image judgement, but it may be worth correcting upstream.