Explosive Grit Takes Center Frame in Benjamin Hinz’s ‘Dead Astronaut’
the animated short film is dreamworld brought to the screen, intense soundscapes aid ink-splashed visuals and sick fight scenes
Dream psychology – specifically, Carl Jung’s Jungian Theory – muses that dreams are a spontaneous self-portrait; your dreams are about you, not others. For local creative Ben Hinz, dreamworld and his animation often overlap.
Take Dead Astronaut: The Swan and the Crab for instance. Hinz’s gritty, explosive eight-minute flick exposes his inner child to “The Company Men” – the corporate-bending personification of innate human greed, which ultimately deliver the astronaut to ‘the crab’ – while the serene swan catches the air as it comes, an emblem of persistence featured about halfway through the film.
“I’m everyone in my cartoons,” Hinz said, noting the psychology of dreams while describing how the swan character came to be. “The swan was the first visual piece that came to me. It’s going to sound cheesy as heck, but I was laying in bed trying to chill myself out, just opening my mind and letting my imagination do its thing. I started imagining this bird flying in slow motion, and it was really beautiful.
“It comes down to, in the astronaut’s mind, an instinct to keep going and to rise.”
Hinz’s latest film to be shared widely with the public – Dead Astronaut: The Swan and the Crab released on Aug. 15 – is the culmination of four years’ worth of efforts, bolstered by the deadline to submit to the University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Unspooled Film Festival in 2024.
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I LIKE INK SPLASHES AND ASH PAINTINGS AND ALL KINDS OF STUFF LIKE THAT JUST TO BRING SOME OF THAT REAL WORLD DIRT AND GRIT INTO THE ANIMATION.
I like to get into some of those murkier waters to elicit a variety of emotions.
BENJAMIN HINZ
ANIMATOR, CREATIVE
Calling the Chippewa Valley home since childhood, Hinz’s affinity for animation stems back to that chapter, too – namely, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which smashed its way into the pop culture mainstream at the time, and never left.
A love of music was instilled in him at an equally young age thanks to his parents, specifically his father, which likely informed Hinz’s business venture of over a decade: effects pedals.
After graduating from Eau Claire’s Memorial High School and starting a family of his own – “my lovely wife, Louise, and our three kids Juniper, Miles, and Finn,” he said while taking his dog outside during a recent interview – the pedals business took off around 2007 before coming to a close in 2020. Then, Louise went to work for Bandcamp and Hinz went back to school.
His journey at UW-Stout began as an arts education student, but once Hinz learned of the animation program, he swiftly pivoted – and fell in love with the art form.
“(Animation) is sort of a combination of all the things I like to do: music, storytelling, and drawing,” he said. “There’s also a lot of technological trickery and technique that I got into, too – I like setting up a system and seeing it work.”
As an only child, Hinz recalls a certain sense of self-reliance. “In 1992, if you wanted to see something you had never seen before, you had to draw it,” he noted.
Similarly, his longtime effects pedal business took form with that same DIY mentality. “When I got into making musical equipment, you could either go spend $200 that you don’t have or you could spend $50 on parts, spend a few days learning, and make it yourself,” he said.
“That really carried over into comics and animation. Of course, we had a lot of help from teachers and the teams we were on (at UW-Stout),” he continued. “The thesis of it all is, if you – or if I – want to make something happen, you gotta do it yourself.”
After four years – a timeline Hinz initially, and ambitiously, thought would look more like two years – and support from dear loved ones, executive producer James Hancock, and production assistance from Jamie Hanson and Mack Hastings (a fellow film creative originally from Eau Claire), Dead Astronaut: The Swan and the Crab is the fruition of that mentality.
While I don’t intend to spoil the animated short for you, I will offer this courtesy: Be mindful of your volume settings at the start of the flick. To that point, the film is as sonically interesting as it is visually – which is saying something, given Hinz’s distinct real-world, purposefully textured style and attention to color palette.
Hancock, the film’s executive producer, funded the new microphone Hinz utilized specifically for dialogue; Music continues to play a significant role in Heinz’s animation work.
“The song that plays when the astronaut jumps out of the car and starts fighting The Company Men, I was working on independently,” Hinz explained. “I thought it was so good, but I can’t rap; I did a little math and found that the tempo of the song would divide perfectly into 24 frames per second, so I could have actions on screen align on-beat.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’m doing a fight scene to this song.’ The rest (of the film) was built off of that.”
While certainly capable of creating and completing digital animations in all its computerized, smooth perfection, the lack of struggle it displays doesn’t necessarily appeal to Hinz.
“I like ink splashes and ash paintings and all kinds of stuff like that just to bring some of that real world dirt and grit into the animation,” Hinz said. “I like to get into some of those murkier waters to elicit a variety of emotions.”
And whatever Dead Astronaut: The Swan and the Crab pulls from you while viewing, you’ll assuredly be left curious what else Hinz has in his repertoire. Head over to loud-arts.com to take a peek into his design work, comics, and additional animated works. (Oh, and in case you’re reading this while also looking to hire a kickass animation production designer, refer to the same website to inquire for Hinz’s keen eye and hand.)
Watch Dead Astronaut: The Swan and the Crab online, now available alongside Ben Hinz's additional works at loud-arts.com.
