Post Script
Pentiment’s art is glorious, but its text is even better
As is entirely proper, Pentiment will receive plenty of plaudits for the standard of its art and animation. What this small team led by art director Hannah Kennedy has produced is nothing short of remarkable: the wood-print character art and backdrops are richly drawn, while different period-appropriate styles are adopted from time to time. As characters chat about books, they’ll pop up within their pages; meanwhile, our protagonist’s dreams sometimes see him visit a sort of mind palace, which has a very different look to his waking surroundings. While dialogue exchanges tend to fix characters in place, there’s always something (or someone) moving in the background; when the camera zooms in for a one-on-one chat, subtle eye and mouth movements and head tilts reveal as much about the speaker’s feelings as their words.