Made in Germany

Humor? Check. Emotional facial expressions? No doubt. And high-quality porcelain, produced at one of Europe’s leading porcelain factories with state-of-the-art technical know-how? Check, check, and check. The high-end porcelain manufacturing process spearheaded by FIFTYEIGHT PRODUCTS raises the bar in porcelain design. This story has the details…

It all started with a passion for computer-animated characters, designed with a love for detail and brought to life via high-end 3D-animations software. In 1998, three ambitious company founders are looking to bring a piece of Silicon Valley to Germany’s Rhine-Main Area. In 1998, Timm Osterhold, Marc Eckart and Max Zimmermann launch their business under the name Computeranimationsstudio FIFTYEIGHT 3D in Wiesbaden. Powered by a start-up loan to the tune of €153,000, the trio is able to purchase two high-end workstations capable of running market-leading animations software.

Hitting the ground running, FIFTYEIGHT 3D quickly makes a name for itself in the international 3D-animations scene. Commercial milestones include Procter and Gamble’s time-honored brand mascot Mr. Clean next to advertisement work for MTV Europe, Sony Music, and Nintendo. As the company hits a steep growth trajectory, official recognition for FIFTYEIGHT 3D arrives in the form of honors such as first place at the annual Animago Awards as well as a Silver Cyber Lion at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, for its blend of creative ideas and artistic execution.

But despite all the creativity, nobody in those early years of the new century would have thought of making real-life products under the FIFTYEIGHT name. Except the usual posters or T-shirts featuring 3D-animated characters. But then again, life always has a tendency to find a way…

In the year 2004, FIFTYEIGHT 3D created an animated video clip sent out as a holiday greetings email to clients, friends, and family. (In those days before the rise of social media, these type of clips were sent as attachments, although hard to imagine today.) The main stars of the video clip were two cheeky coffee cups with lively facial expressions, constantly squabbling and getting on each other’s case. Not quite the holiday spirit, but nevertheless, the clip strikes a nerve and goes viral, as it is re-sent and forwarded thousands of times that Holiday season. And with a budding fan community demanding more videos of the zany coffee cups, FIFTYEIGHT 3D gladly obliges, and the little cups emerge as resident brand mascots. So as the next step, someone threw out an idea: “Hey, why not make real coffee cups, just like the ones in our videos!?” To which everyone replied: “Great idea, but what do we actually know about making things from porcelain?”

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From virtuality to reality

As it turns out, the FIFTYEIGHT 3D team has to curb its enthusiasm quite a bit, as “making stuff from porcelain” is really much harder than it sounds. Time for a reality check. Although the designers at FIFTYEIGHT 3D have the key advantage of creating their characters as full-fledged three-dimensional computer models – with fully flexible facial expressions, at that – transferring this data into the real world is an arduous process. And working with porcelain is its own art form. “It actually wasn’t that simple to transform our 3D-models into porcelain counterparts. At least not at the high level of quality and detail we also apply to our digital animations,” said Timm Osterhold.

The three founders of FIFTYEIGHT 3D finally manage to find a small porcelain workshop in Southern Germany. But presented with the complex 3D-models for FIFTYEIGHT’s characters, they respond: “Absolutely impossible!” Because any regular porcelain bowl or cup may have the occasional edges or ornaments. But when it comes to rendering the kind of facial details envisioned for the quirky characters in porcelain, the verdict is: Impossible! After some trial and error, together with some serious hard work, the first real life products end up seeing the light of day. “We were all the more happy to welcome the first successful prototypes of TASSEN bowls to the world in 2007,”