Ring of Red Dot

So my friend asked his server to take some photos of the patch he made, and I had this idea of using the red lens coatings of red dots to contrast against the black/white/red/blue of the patch.
I had the final image in my head, but the challenge was getting to there. In the end I think I came 90% close to a true realization, but that’s as good as i’m going to be able to get for now.
Here’s the final product, “making of” to follow

I knew I wanted the red dots in a circle around the patch, and I wanted the photo to be an “upskirt” angle
To facilitate this I designed a 3d printable jig to allow me to use 8mm aluminum square tubing and 3d printed picatinny rails with cuts for the tubes. This allows me to position the red dots back and forth as needed, while letting them “float” above the table.
Ideally I would find a way of doing this without the pic rails at all so that it would be a true upskirt, and the red dots would really truly be floating, but that was too difficult to think of a quick solution.
I modeled some optics to get a general idea of size, and then placed all them face down on some paper arranged in a way I think would work well.
I then marked with pencil, measured, and used those measurements to decide the positions of the tubes relative to the tube holder.
Then it was a matter of printing, assembly, and revisions until I got the positions the way I wanted. After that I took the photos and used contrast and brightness adjustments to tweak the color and intensity of the lenses, and make the patch appear more detailed to let the texture come through.