Hey everybody, I've been kicking around an idea for an inlay and I thought I'd see what some folks here with experience (I have none) thought about the possibility of my concept.
It's going to be for a guitar, and one that probably won't see the light of day, as I'm a bassist . It's a tribute to one of my favorite bands, TOOL. On their Aenema album they had a special jewel case (which they've gotten progressively more artistic on with each subsequent album)
On this one, the front cover is made with plastic with tiny ridges that make for a cool "motion" effect in the specially drawn image behind it. You've probably seen this effect on some packaging, whether it was a movie, a cd or a paperback book even. They included a few pics that would work with this effect, and one of my faves is a cool looking eye. Here's a pic of the eye without any effect.
With the cover, it makes the iris of the eye scroll from one corner to the other. Neat effect.
What I was thinking of was cutting out the eye pic, cutting out an appropriately sized piece of the ridged cover and inlaying that. Now the question is how do I maintain the ridged surface in the inlay that is required for the effect I would want. Well, I figured I'd overlay a thin piece of clear acrylic. Now the problem is, how do I glue everything down and still maintain the cool effect, without it all just looking like a blurry mess? I'm worried that epoxy will affect the, uh, effect. Light needs to be able to refract off of the ridges, and this won't happen if it's covered in epoxy. I know this is possible, but I need to figure out how.
Any ideas?