Character: Bundt (Super Mario RPG)

Rigged for hypothetical combat animations.

Eyes and candles are rigged elements that can move independently. Candles are rigged to light/animate/extinguish.

Rigged body allows for fun deformations too. Someone better than me can do soft-body physics on the icing to make it floppy maybe.

I used high-low baking and some ambient occlusion-based shaders to color the props.

Simple painted texture for the rest of the cake.

By comparison: the first time I tried to make this model in 2020, a few weeks after I first started learning Blender.