An exciting and unique production, in the form of an animation, is currently in the progress of being created for students to enjoy. “The Wreckoning” is set in this building and contains many factual characteristics about the school, but is also a work of fiction with supernatural elements. The environment represents the unknown world of the future. 

“The main character, she’s what you call a scourge,” Daniel Ruff, ‘24, director of the animation, said. “She has powers in this time, like 30 years from now. So in 2054 basically, people in our age group are older. So our culture now is different from the main character’s culture.” 

Ruff was inspired to animate from the interests he had growing up and his enjoyment of digital art.

“When I was little, I wanted to make games because I loved games, and to do that, you need to animate,” Ruff said.

In order to bring his animations to life, Ruff has tried many different programs that have helped him improve.

“I started creating my animations on Scratch,”  Ruff said, “then I went to Unreal Engine but I didn’t like how they animated them, so I went to Blender which is what I’m using now.” 

However, a character can not be complete without a voice. Ruff held auditions to find the perfect voices.

“To pick the voices I read the lines to myself and then I see the voice in my head and I’m thinking, ‘Are they trying their best? Are they in character?’” Ruff said.

One passionate voice that stood out among the auditions was Nate Caudill, ’24. He was encouraged to try out because of his background of participating in many theater productions.

“I’ve been doing theater here at Walnut since I was in seventh grade and I’ve always been told that I should do voice acting and it sounds really fun to me,” Caudill, a voice actor in the animation, said. I just wanted to see what I could do and help out a fellow student in creating something cool.” 

Voice acting forces actors to face challenges that make them utilize their voices to the fullest.

“A lot of the time, human expression is nonverbal,” Caudill said, “So it’s not the things that you’re saying, but it’s the expression on your face and your body language. So when you take that away, it’s kind of a little bit harder to convey a message.”

This experience of voice acting isn’t a one-time thing for Cuadill, but something that he is passionate and interested about.

“I hope to do this in the future, and make a career out of it,” Caudill said, “It’s my dream job to create art and something really cool.” 

With a great story and animations drawn, combined with expressive voices, Ruff hopes to send a message to students.  

“The audience sees the main character going through a lot of stuff, so I would say, just be yourself,” Ruff said.