How a Team Designed and Created a BoursoBank Ad Using Blender
Kay Hilman, Co-Founder and Art Director at DOT4, shared how they created a BoursoBank Ad, explaining how they brought the concept to life, how they created the ribbons, and how they did the animation.
Introduction
Hi, my name is Kay Hilman, and I'm one of the Co-Founders and Art Director at DOT4. I've been in the motion graphics/3D animation industry for about 10 years. Mainly as a freelancer, but in late 2024, I got together with 3 of my best friends, and we decided to start a small studio called DOT4.
We're a remote studio focused on creating high-end 3D visuals, and I'm extremely proud of how far we have come already. During our first year, we worked hard on getting seen, sharing our in-house projects on social media platforms like Instagram, Behance, and Reddit.
One of our more recent hits called SIGNED really gathered some attention, catapulting us to over 10k followers on Instagram. Increasing our reach led us to getting into contact with and getting recognition from agencies. Thus, after doing a bunch of small client and in-house projects, it landed one of our first big clients, BoursoBank!
Relax & BoursoBank
We got approached by Relax Agency. A French agency discovered our work on the Behance platform. BoursoBank approached them for a new project, a "2026 New Year's animation". Relax had done a similar project with them before, and were now seeking the right partner to do this next project with.
And then they found us! Relax told us they felt like we were the right fit due to one of our previous in-house projects called "Hello-DOT4". It had a similar feel to what Bourso was searching for, which was perfect for us. The briefing was very straightforward. It was going to be a 30-second animation celebrating the new year and the pride of BoursoBank.
We started on the project on the 3rd of November, with the deadline on the 17th of December. During projects like these, we ensure to lay out a detailed schedule where we block out each week to give the client a general idea of what the production process will be.
Concept
We started this pre–production phase by proposing two general concepts with moodboards and initial styleframes. Relax had already provided a small batch of references, but to ensure we were aligned with the client's vision, we created our own boards.
We were given quite a lot of creative freedom, and thus we provided storyboards with the two concepts, again to see what aligns best with our client. They picked the things they liked, and after some feedback, we made adjustments and landed on our final concept and storyboard.
Animatic
After the storyboard got approved, we moved on to the animatic, sketching out the camera moves and getting a basic sense of what the overall flow of the animation would be. For us, this is one of the most important phases of projects like these, as we try to lock down the general timing and flow of the animation.
We often tell each other that it should feel like a rollercoaster, gliding smoothly over the track without any rough corners or hard stops, unless intentional! We knew that there wasn't going to be any heavy research and development needed for this project, as most of the storyboard was pretty self-explanatory.
It's something that differs between projects due to scope and time restrictions. For example, a project like SIGNED was much more R&D heavy, as we really put a lot of effort into making the signs feel like our beloved Dutch traffic signs.
Blender
Our pipeline is very Blender-heavy. We love the software, especially because of its developments in Geometry Nodes in the past years. Honestly, without them, motion design wouldn't really be feasible in my eyes. The non-destructive nature allows us to build our own tools and easily iterate over design choices.
I come from a Cinema 4D background, and as far as I know, it used to be the usual choice of software for motion-design together with Houdini. But in the past 4 years, I have completely shifted towards Blender because the software gives me a lot of creative freedom. At DOT4, we all try to break this old stigma of Blender only being capable of creating stylised or lower-tier visuals.
It's interesting to see people being surprised by what's possible with the software, which I think is mainly due to what previous artists usually create with it. To break this stigma, in a fun way, we often share behind-the-scenes footage, motivating other artists to push Blender to its limits.
Ribbons
A big example of Blender's strength on the BoursoBank project was how we handled the Ribbons. I created a geometry node tool to quickly build the ribbons and simulate them. Geometry nodes are still lacking in their simulation capabilities, so I came up with a workaround.
We store attribute data for pin-groups that dynamically change based on user input. Then all of the Ribbons get collected by another geometry node object that has a cloth simulation on its modifier stack. Tweak the parameters, run the simulation, and boom, you got satisfying ribbons!
This separation allows us to easily modify ribbons in their collection, animate them using Geo nodes, and then simulate them once ready. We do something similar for the balloons as well.
It would be a dream to not have to rely on Blender's built-in cloth simulator and fully handle the cloth simulation within Geo nodes. Like the nerd I am, I follow every change and update Blender is working on, and recently they seem to be working on hair sims inside of Geo nodes.
It's a stepping stone away from cloth-sims, right? To me, at least, it seems that there is some light at the end of the tunnel for Geo node-based cloth sims and many other simulation tools.
Shortcuts & Post
Since the production time was quite short, we downloaded or bought some of the assets needed, like a laptop or phone model. It's fun to model, but verbose when someone else has already published a well-designed model or texture themselves. Especially if they have to look realistic!
This allows us to focus more on the general presentation, like lighting and animation. Of course, some things have to be modeled from scratch, such as the interior walls or some desk elements, so we always try to find a nice balance.
After all of the shading and lighting is done, it's time for rendering. We render most of our projects simply using Blender Cycles. It's an amazing renderer, especially in combination with the denoiser.
Our only wish for the future would be tesselation-free displacement, like recently added in Redshift, but who knows, maybe if anyone at Blender reads the article, they might pick up on it! Our compositing pipeline isn't that complex either. We run the footage through some glow, sharpening, and color correction, and land on the final look!
Conclusion
The BoursoBank 2026 projects took us 6 weeks in total, from start to finish. The client and agency were very happy with the results. We always try to find ways to improve our production process, and found a bottleneck around render/export settings. So during the holidays, I wrote a little add-on where we can easily switch between render, view layer, and export settings all at once.
This will help speed up that process, leaving more room for creativity. I hope that anyone who reads this can get something out of this article, maybe even a bit of inspiration. In the meantime, DOT4 is hard at work creating new Blender animations, so stay tuned for those on any of our socials!
