Shaped cakes are fairly simply to make, if you have the right tools. At my bakery we do 2d shaped cakes daily.  We cut the shape out of sheet cakes only. There is basically no limit on what we can make.

How to make a shaped cake

We first find a picture online of our character. Than we place that picture in our  kopy kake machine, we than trace the outline of the picture onto the cake.  From here, we cut out the shape and ice it. We than go back and trace out the details and fill them in with icing or airbrush color.