Critical Mass’ William Mincy leverages 3D realism to build client assets

In order to represent a theoretical car designed to keep Black drivers safe from disproportionate searches and stoppages by police, Critical Mass needed to design a model as if it actually existed. That’s where William Mincy came in. Mincy, director of technology at the Calgary, Canada-based digital agency, used Unreal Engine and other rendering tools to create a photorealistic 3D version of the “DWB” (Driving While Black) vehicle for an ad. The intentionally spartan car, built for the Courageous Conversation Global Foundation, features transparent doors and lacks a glove compartment and trunk—all of which are meant to indicate the ways that Black drivers face heightened scrutiny and danger. The realism of the ad—which evokes that of an actual auto commercial—“lends itself well to what the car is supposed to highlight,” Mincy said. The DWB project is just one example of how Mincy is leading Critical Mass’ 3D practice, using rendering technology to build realistic and customized assets for clients. Critical Mass focuses on using innovation to achieve desired outcomes for brands such as Mars and BMW, as well as pro bono clients including Courageous Conversation Global Foundation. And in work for a global CPG brand, Mincy recently turned his attention to generative AI, integrating its capabilities into workflows in order to develop a bevy of creative concepts. “We can provide much more content to satisfy our clients’ needs and give them the most important thing: time,” Mincy said. See Ad Age’s Tech Power List honoring marketing leaders What is the biggest technological challenge facing your sector of advertising and technology, and why? As someone who lived through the Flash-to-HTML5 shift, I feel like this generation of technologists is experiencing this with AI. There are more concerns about how AI will replace people rather than embracing what AI can do to improve the quality and efficiency of everything we do. AI and automation go hand in hand, and I don’t think we elevate that connection as much as we should. How are you preparing to overcome this challenge? By encouraging teams to work more toward a “don’t repeat yourself” approach to what we do, leveraging what AI is good at to help us reduce the amount of repetitive tasks we do across projects. Also, in looking for ways to leverage AI to help us add features we would normally need more time to develop. What piece of technology could you absolutely not live without, besides your phone? I can live without technology quite well, but the thing that I would miss the most would be my iPad Mini. Last year I received one and was part of the population that didn’t see why this could be more beneficial than my iPad Pro, but now I get it. It’s become an additional screen, notebook, sketchbook, CAD platform, browser and more that I carry with me to replace a lot of other things. I still use the iPad Pro, but I carry the Mini with me all the time. Who is your technological hero, alive or from the past, who inspired you the most? Most of the people I tend to look up to are scientists. They have the ability to take what we think we know about the world and evolve it to solve globally pressing issues. In tech, one person I look up to is my friend Drew Trujillo, former director of technology at Meow Wolf. He’s always been great to talk to and is insanely creative in very different ways than my mind tends to work. See Ad Age’s Tech Power List honoring marketing leaders

Critical Mass’ William Mincy leverages 3D realism to build client assets

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