celticwhisper
04-08-2012, 02:47 PM
A thought occurred to me the other day when looking at old RPG art. That thought was "Hey, it'd be pretty cool to do a Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne themed mod where the case has glowing lines that resemble the character's tattoos."
I started thinking about how to achieve this and I wondered if it was possible to cut a shape out of the side case panel, cut plexiglas to the correct shape and fit it in the panel opening, spray it with glow-in-the-dark paint, and then run green EL wire on the underside so it would glow outward. Bonus: Keeps glowing a while after PC is powered off, freaks out housemates. :D :up:
My thinking is "As a kid, it was always 'hold glow-in-the-dark widget up to the light to charge it and then watch it glow.' If GITD paint is applied to transparent material like plexiglas, and held to a constant light source, it should keep glowing as long as the light source is active. Transparent material allows light from source to shine through and make contact with GITD paint." My only worry is that GITD paint would only respond to UV-spectrum light and thus necessitate the use of an inside-mounted blacklight (cold-cathode maybe?) instead of wire.
Would this work? Is GITD paint reactive to only UV light or would EL wire serve to light it up and provide a uniform luminescence after enough "charge time"? Or would the paint be too thick and just block out the green light?
For reference, a picture of the inspiration for this case:
http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Hito-Shura?image=Hitoshura-jpg
The tats are actually black with green outlines (for some reason I recalled them as solid green) so I suppose black paint edged with green EL wire would work, but now that I thought of the EL-driven GITD-paint idea, I'd kinda like to know if it would work.
I started thinking about how to achieve this and I wondered if it was possible to cut a shape out of the side case panel, cut plexiglas to the correct shape and fit it in the panel opening, spray it with glow-in-the-dark paint, and then run green EL wire on the underside so it would glow outward. Bonus: Keeps glowing a while after PC is powered off, freaks out housemates. :D :up:
My thinking is "As a kid, it was always 'hold glow-in-the-dark widget up to the light to charge it and then watch it glow.' If GITD paint is applied to transparent material like plexiglas, and held to a constant light source, it should keep glowing as long as the light source is active. Transparent material allows light from source to shine through and make contact with GITD paint." My only worry is that GITD paint would only respond to UV-spectrum light and thus necessitate the use of an inside-mounted blacklight (cold-cathode maybe?) instead of wire.
Would this work? Is GITD paint reactive to only UV light or would EL wire serve to light it up and provide a uniform luminescence after enough "charge time"? Or would the paint be too thick and just block out the green light?
For reference, a picture of the inspiration for this case:
http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Hito-Shura?image=Hitoshura-jpg
The tats are actually black with green outlines (for some reason I recalled them as solid green) so I suppose black paint edged with green EL wire would work, but now that I thought of the EL-driven GITD-paint idea, I'd kinda like to know if it would work.