Step 1;

Click here to see the final effect! First create a cube and scale it down and out, making it into a flat board shape. Then apply a simple material to the cube, I choose a red color for this tutorial for the obvious reasons....

Step 2;

Ok, now create Bend deformer and place it in the cube shape to apply it. Now if you adjusts the strength value you'll see that the cube doesn't really react the way we want it to.

Step 3;

Alright let's adjust Bend deformer, first rotate the Bend deformer -90 degrees in the H rotation.

Step 4;

Next increase the segments in the cube, the more segments you have the smoother the curve will be. But be careful too many and your render time will go way up.

Step 5;

Now rotate the Bend deformer in the B rotation -90 degrees. Your cube should look like the image below.

For this next part I included a video demonstrating what kind of effect you should have at this point. You'll notice at this part there's a "tail" created when the Bend deformer moves past a certain spot. We can fix this by playing with the scale settings of the Bend deformer. Click on the image below to see an example.

Ok and now here is another video showing what effect you should have by now. Keyframe the position of the Bend object to animate the way you want.

Step 6;

Ok now add a nurbs Text object to the scene and place it in an Extrude NURBS object. To make the text bend the same way as the cube you can duplicate the Bend deformer from the cube and group it with the Extrude NURBS.


And there you go! Now feel free to light and texture it the way you want! Enjoy!