“Cars” Cow Tipping Cake

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A few months ago novelty cake maker DecoPac, Inc. hired me to help them develop a jumbo “signature” cake to promote the Cars franchise for Disney/Pixar. Because this would be a large, triple-layer cake there was more freedom than usual to do something really fun and appealing.

I started by working up several very rough thumbnail concepts of possible ideas:

(Click to enlarge.)
(Click to enlarge.)

The client liked the “tractor tipping” idea (bottom row, middle). So I worked that up into a detailed color sketch:

"Cars" Cake Concept by Cedric Hohnstadt for DecoPac, Inc.
(Click to enlarge.)

From their DecoPac refined the design and sent it off to the manufacturer. And yes, the “cow tractor” tips over and even makes a “Moo” sound!

Cars-Tractor Tipping ToyYou can also view the final product on the DecoPac website.

Birthday Cake Topper Concepts

One of my clients is DecoPac, Inc., a company that specializes in novelty birthday cakes. Most of my work for them involves licensed characters from Disney, DreamWorks, Cartoon Network, etc. but every once in a while they hire me to work up an original cake concept. In this case they wanted to create a jumbo “Happy Birthday” cake design. This would be a “signature” cake, meaning it would be much larger and taller than a typical birthday cake.

The challenge was to create something fun and festive that hadn’t been done a hundred times before. I started by brainstorming a few possible novelty toys or doo-dad’s that could go on top of the cake. Something small and fun, but hopefully not too cliche. These were my first rough ideas:

Birthday cake topper ideas by Cedric Hohnstadt
(Click to enlarge.)

I also played around with a few ideas for a theme on the actual cake itself.:

Click to enlarge.
(Click to enlarge.)

The liked the 4th and 6th cake ideas, so I combined them into this concept:

birthday-sketch-v4abirthday-sketch-v4bFrom their DecoPac took this rough idea and worked with their manufacturers to develop the final product. As often happens, more changes were made as the idea continued to evolve in-house. Here’s how the final cakes turned out:

HappyBirthday-SignatureCake

 

You can also view the final product on the DecoPac website.