Official Daemoness Guitars Thread

[JimF]

Bet his eyes magically healed when it came time to amend the invoice price for inflation

 

[drmosh]

Bet his eyes magically healed when it came time to amend the invoice price for inflation

Mine increased 1k and the excuses were just hilarious. I get it, people need to make a living but down payments and contracts do mean something

 

[drmosh]

Nolly let me try his guitar and the smooth rosewood neck + thick consistent tone across the board it blew my mind. Vik's pickups used to vary massively. Some people set their's were muddy, others said they were harsh and ice picky. I lucked out and got a really good set on mine that were better than anything I tried by big brands.

Conceptually, Vik had the right idea, but he was no pickup maker. As you said, it was all over the place and the last guitar I got we decided on BKPs. Having said that, I am one of the lucky ones that got their guitars

 

[Flappydoodle]

Yikes. I saw this thread being bumped with recent conversation and wondered if something had happened.

So it's still total radio silence then? Kinda sucks.

 

[drmosh]

Yikes. I saw this thread being bumped with recent conversation and wondered if something had happened.

So it's still total radio silence then? Kinda sucks.

last I saw (could have been old news) he was working on guitars

 

[JimF]

Mine increased 1k and the excuses were just hilarious. I get it, people need to make a living but down payments and contracts do mean something

Exactly! If Daemoness are not charging a downpayment that can withstand their wait list, then those are too points they have control over! Its like a solo guy selling pizzas offering a 30mins or less delivery, and then consistently turning up in 55minutes, and charging more than their menu prices, whilst rolling his eyes and making excuses, with everyone knowing its a one-man operation.

 

[asfeir]

I've been away for almost 5 years. Very sad to see what you guys are going through. Mine was flawless even though it took 5 years to build (2013-->2018). Dylan checked in a couple of times after delivery to ask me how I liked it too.

 

[narad]

I've been away for almost 5 years. Very sad to see what you guys are going through. Mine was flawless even though it took 5 years to build (2013-->2018). Dylan checked in a couple of times after delivery to ask me how I liked it too.

That one's absolutely insane. Love the artwork on the body. It reminds me of why a lot of us threw down money knowing the waits would be long and precarious... no one else can make that kind of guitar.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

That one's absolutely insane. Love the artwork on the body. It reminds me of why a lot of us threw down money knowing the waits would be long and precarious... no one else can make that kind of guitar.

Funnily enough, the PRS Dragon 30th Anniversary model (2015, I think?) has the dragon in the same pose as this phoenix, with the tail extending down the fretboard. All done in inlay, and to the tune of $20k or whatever those PRS Private Stocks went for, but it can be done.

Incidentally, with how much Dylan's work created a buzz on this forum, and how much work guys like Mike Learn were able to get in years past, I'm surprised there's no artists that've specialised in offering the kinds of aftermarket embellishments that this forum gravitated towards with their Daemoness builds.

I suppose that's basically what Dylan had become by the end, anyway. It's just that he also had to build the guitars, which obviously was no small task, and seems to have had the effect of burning the candle at both ends.

 

[narad]

Funnily enough, the PRS Dragon 30th Anniversary model (2015, I think?) has the dragon in the same pose as this phoenix, with the tail extending down the fretboard. All done in inlay, and to the tune of $20k or whatever those PRS Private Stocks went for, but it can be done.

Incidentally, with how much Dylan's work created a buzz on this forum, and how much work guys like Mike Learn were able to get in years past, I'm surprised there's no artists that've specialised in offering the kinds of aftermarket embellishments that this forum gravitated towards with their Daemoness builds.

I suppose that's basically what Dylan had become by the end, anyway. It's just that he also had to build the guitars, which obviously was no small task, and seems to have had the effect of burning the candle at both ends.

I don't even particularly like the inlay extending on to the fretboard... that's where it starts gettnig a little tacky to me, at least how it is here where the art style shifts dramatically at the fretboard. But the way he did the phoenix as a sort of negative etch in the stain over figured maple, is insane. Everything about the body is like peak form Daemoness to me.

But ya, these days, if there was a guy who could pull that off as some sort of aftermarket thing on existing guitars, I would. But here the materials are actually important to the execution. The guitar really needs to be built up from ground zero to get the final full effect here.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

I don't even particularly like the inlay extending on to the fretboard... that's where it starts gettnig a little tacky to me, at least how it is here where the art style shifts dramatically at the fretboard. But the way he did the phoenix as a sort of negative etch in the stain over figured maple, is insane. Everything about the body is like peak form Daemoness to me.

But ya, these days, if there was a guy who could pull that off as some sort of aftermarket thing on existing guitars, I would. But here the materials are actually important to the execution. The guitar really needs to be built up from ground zero to get the final full effect here.

From a professional artists' perspective, it's actually pretty light work. Which is to say that anyone could do it if they just so happen to be an immensely talented draftsman and painter, who's practiced for more than a decade to get to that point.

Having said that, I'm not 100% sure what technique was used here. The wing tips on the left side look almost stenciled on. Whereas I would've normally assumed Dylan created this by laying down the stain, then scraping back highlights using a razor blade, just as he did for 'Valkyrie's Curse'. I'd imagine he used a few different techniques on this phoenix, perhaps including a stencil...certainly the black around the beak and the tongue has been painted in after the fact. I agree it's a smart use of figured maple to give body to the phoenix's flames.

Look up scratchboard or scraperboard to see art that uses that same style, by the way. Diana Lee was one artist who was very adept in the medium. From an artistic point of view, that's exactly what Dylan is doing in these builds.

There's some mind-blowing artists working these days. As I'm sure I've said before, it isn't finding someone talented enough to paint on a guitar that's difficult. Rather, it's the shipping to and from the luthier to the artist and back that adds delays and costs.

But if it's what you want, it can definitely be done. And I think one important lesson from the Daemoness saga is probably that having a builder-artist like Dylan isn't as simple as it seemed on the surface. It made for slow progress, and it's been generally agreed in hindsight is that Dylan was not charging enough for his creations.

So if Dylan doesn't resurface, maybe that's the solution for would-be Daemoness owners. Commission a build from a reputable luthier, source an artist, and just eat the $8k or whatever it'll cost to get the results you want within spec, with extra shipping and handling.

I'm sure there would be hassles but I doubt it'd take 5+ years to get done going about it that way.

No disrespect meant to Dylan's incredible work, of course. I just mean that there's clearly far more demand than he can meet, and maybe more sensible ways to get the work done.

 

[narad]

From a professional artists' perspective, it's actually pretty light work. Which is to say that anyone could do it if they just so happen to be an immensely talented draftsman and painter, who's practiced for more than a decade to get to that point.

Having said that, I'm not 100% sure what technique was used here. The wing tips on the left side look almost stenciled on. Whereas I would've normally assumed Dylan created this by laying down the stain, then scraping back highlights using a razor blade, just as he did for 'Valkyrie's Curse'. I'd imagine he used a few different techniques on this phoenix, perhaps including a stencil...certainly the black around the beak and the tongue has been painted in after the fact. I agree it's a smart use of figured maple to give body to the phoenix's flames.

Look up scratchboard or scraperboard to see art that uses that same style, by the way. Diana Lee was one artist who was very adept in the medium. From an artistic point of view, that's exactly what Dylan is doing in these builds.

There's some mind-blowing artists working these days. As I'm sure I've said before, it isn't finding someone talented enough to paint on a guitar that's difficult. Rather, it's the shipping to and from the luthier to the artist and back that adds delays and costs.

But if it's what you want, it can definitely be done. And I think one important lesson from the Daemoness saga is probably that having a builder-artist like Dylan isn't as simple as it seemed on the surface. It made for slow progress, and it's been generally agreed in hindsight is that Dylan was not charging enough for his creations.

So if Dylan doesn't resurface, maybe that's the solution for would-be Daemoness owners. Commission a build from a reputable luthier, source an artist, and just eat the $8k or whatever it'll cost to get the results you want within spec, with extra shipping and handling.

I'm sure there would be hassles but I doubt it'd take 5+ years to get done going about it that way.

No disrespect meant to Dylan's incredible work, of course. I just mean that there's clearly far more demand than he can meet, and maybe more sensible ways to get the work done.

Even if there are artists around with the technical skill to recreate such a thing, I don't think there's much replacement for the combination of Dylan's talent and ...mindset? It's not like he worked from a customer-provided detailed sketch of this stuff -- envisioned how to lay that out and what it should look like, and that vision is also an important part of what made Daemoness work so well (when it worked).

I once tried this sort of 2-person strategy when trying to get custom inlays on a Ken Lawrence explorer. Ken's style is very simple, and while I've grown to like the sort of caveman design, at the time I wanted some art nouveau style inlay. I even knew roughly how I wanted it laid out, and I had commissioned an artist who definitely knew what she was doing from a technical pov, but when she had outlined how to cut up the pieces, etc., it just didn't have the effect I was going for in the inlay. So sucks for me trying to make that vision clear, sucks for her trying to fill in the gaps, and ultimately I spent a bunch of money and we wound up not doing any inlay.

What's great about Dylan is you can basically throw out a rough idea, and he's going to view that idea within the context of a ton of metal imagery, and have a good idea of how it should be laid out. A great artist doing family portraits might be technically good enough to do this, but it's hard to imagine they're going to deliver the right sort of design for this particular context IMO. At least I've tried once, and failed once.

On the flip side, there are many Daemoness examples that could have been outsourced. That water drop inlay for instance... imagine you could get that done pretty much anywhere. Etching existing art designs into wood? Sure, someone else can do that. But there's also a bunch, which happen to be my favorite, that don't seem easily done any other way.

 

[Hollowway]

Even if there are artists around with the technical skill to recreate such a thing, I don't think there's much replacement for the combination of Dylan's talent and ...mindset? It's not like he worked from a customer-provided detailed sketch of this stuff -- envisioned how to lay that out and what it should look like, and that vision is also an important part of what made Daemoness work so well (when it worked).

I once tried this sort of 2-person strategy when trying to get custom inlays on a Ken Lawrence explorer. Ken's style is very simple, and while I've grown to like the sort of caveman design, at the time I wanted some art nouveau style inlay. I even knew roughly how I wanted it laid out, and I had commissioned an artist who definitely knew what she was doing from a technical pov, but when she had outlined how to cut up the pieces, etc., it just didn't have the effect I was going for in the inlay. So sucks for me trying to make that vision clear, sucks for her trying to fill in the gaps, and ultimately I spent a bunch of money and we wound up not doing any inlay.

What's great about Dylan is you can basically throw out a rough idea, and he's going to view that idea within the context of a ton of metal imagery, and have a good idea of how it should be laid out. A great artist doing family portraits might be technically good enough to do this, but it's hard to imagine they're going to deliver the right sort of design for this particular context IMO. At least I've tried once, and failed once.

On the flip side, there are many Daemoness examples that could have been outsourced. That water drop inlay for instance... imagine you could get that done pretty much anywhere. Etching existing art designs into wood? Sure, someone else can do that. But there's also a bunch, which happen to be my favorite, that don't seem easily done any other way.

Really well said. It kind of reminds me of how people used to say Apple was able to get such cool devices. They didn’t build the device, then hand it over to the designers, and then the software engineers. Instead, all those involved worked as a team all the way through. That’s what Dylan was able to do, by himself, that would be super hard to arrange in an ad hoc way by regular consumers like us.

 

[mehegama]

Even if there are artists around with the technical skill to recreate such a thing, I don't think there's much replacement for the combination of Dylan's talent and ...mindset? It's not like he worked from a customer-provided detailed sketch of this stuff -- envisioned how to lay that out and what it should look like, and that vision is also an important part of what made Daemoness work so well (when it worked).

I once tried this sort of 2-person strategy when trying to get custom inlays on a Ken Lawrence explorer. Ken's style is very simple, and while I've grown to like the sort of caveman design, at the time I wanted some art nouveau style inlay. I even knew roughly how I wanted it laid out, and I had commissioned an artist who definitely knew what she was doing from a technical pov, but when she had outlined how to cut up the pieces, etc., it just didn't have the effect I was going for in the inlay. So sucks for me trying to make that vision clear, sucks for her trying to fill in the gaps, and ultimately I spent a bunch of money and we wound up not doing any inlay.

What's great about Dylan is you can basically throw out a rough idea, and he's going to view that idea within the context of a ton of metal imagery, and have a good idea of how it should be laid out. A great artist doing family portraits might be technically good enough to do this, but it's hard to imagine they're going to deliver the right sort of design for this particular context IMO. At least I've tried once, and failed once.

On the flip side, there are many Daemoness examples that could have been outsourced. That water drop inlay for instance... imagine you could get that done pretty much anywhere. Etching existing art designs into wood? Sure, someone else can do that. But there's also a bunch, which happen to be my favorite, that don't seem easily done any other way.

There is no question the Phoenix guitar was inspired by the PRS one. In my opinion the PRS one looks much better, but without a doubt Dylan did an amazing job, art wise on this one.
The only issue with this type of guitars is that they look amazing for the first few times you see it and then usually you either not pay attention anymore or starts looking a bit tacky.
That was my perception with Daemoness, today I would def go with a very nice top with an exotic burst or so, rather than some design like that.
The 6+ years wait is always a guarantee that by the time you got your guitar, you have changed your taste and opinion 20 times.

 

[narad]

There is no question the Phoenix guitar was inspired by the PRS one. In my opinion the PRS one looks much better, but without a doubt Dylan did an amazing job, art wise on this one.
The only issue with this type of guitars is that they look amazing for the first few times you see it and then usually you either not pay attention anymore or starts looking a bit tacky.
That was my perception with Daemoness, today I would def go with a very nice top with an exotic burst or so, rather than some design like that.
The 6+ years wait is always a guarantee that by the time you got your guitar, you have changed your taste and opinion 20 times.

I don't know man, this has been pretty much the definition of tacky for me, at least since I graduated high school...

(though I do like that the materials on the fretboard and body are the same, so it flows naturally. My only criticism of the Phoenix)

 

[mehegama]

I don't know man, this has been pretty much the definition of tacky for me, at least since I graduated high school...

(though I do like that the materials on the fretboard and body are the same, so it flows naturally. My only criticism of the Phoenix)

Personally i like the colours and the details more on the PRS, but I guess it is a matter of personal taste. Again both look amazing as an art piece, then for me at least, both look a bit tacky a bit later. These days i prefer more Dylan's more classic top guitars

 

[Sermo Lupi]

Even if there are artists around with the technical skill to recreate such a thing, I don't think there's much replacement for the combination of Dylan's talent and ...mindset? It's not like he worked from a customer-provided detailed sketch of this stuff -- envisioned how to lay that out and what it should look like, and that vision is also an important part of what made Daemoness work so well (when it worked).

I once tried this sort of 2-person strategy when trying to get custom inlays on a Ken Lawrence explorer. Ken's style is very simple, and while I've grown to like the sort of caveman design, at the time I wanted some art nouveau style inlay. I even knew roughly how I wanted it laid out, and I had commissioned an artist who definitely knew what she was doing from a technical pov, but when she had outlined how to cut up the pieces, etc., it just didn't have the effect I was going for in the inlay. So sucks for me trying to make that vision clear, sucks for her trying to fill in the gaps, and ultimately I spent a bunch of money and we wound up not doing any inlay.

What's great about Dylan is you can basically throw out a rough idea, and he's going to view that idea within the context of a ton of metal imagery, and have a good idea of how it should be laid out. A great artist doing family portraits might be technically good enough to do this, but it's hard to imagine they're going to deliver the right sort of design for this particular context IMO. At least I've tried once, and failed once.

On the flip side, there are many Daemoness examples that could have been outsourced. That water drop inlay for instance... imagine you could get that done pretty much anywhere. Etching existing art designs into wood? Sure, someone else can do that. But there's also a bunch, which happen to be my favorite, that don't seem easily done any other way.

I think you're vastly underestimating the art world, here. Dylan's art is great, and I don't want the takeaway from this comment to be that he's easily replaceable. However, there's absolutely artists working today with equal talent and vision as Dylan, capable of producing art analogous to even the most complex Daemoness builds.

Inlays are definitely a bit different, as they're not a widely practiced art outside of luthiery. This artist that you went to, did she specialise in inlay? I'd almost be inclined to seek out a marquetry or mosaic artist for a project like that. More on that later.

As for the 'metal aesthetic', that definitely is not a barrier to entry. To the extent that 'metal' has a cohesive aesthetic (and it's more a grouping of disparate styles), it's highly emulative of earlier art. Hell, just there's already thousands of tattoo artists working within that umbrella of styles, some of whom already do art commissions on the side. Instagram is full of them, and they're already used to hearing 'I want a Viking sword and a flaming bird, but make it all sick looking'.

What Daemonesses do you think are not able to be reproduced? I cannot think of a single example, myself, but then I also collect more art than guitars these days.

Also, while I'm mostly talking about the body art Dylan was being asked to draw and paint, Dylan's use of digital scanning and laser engraving/CNC to transfer his designs to the fretboard inlays makes those more easily replicable as well.

There, I'd say the biggest hurdle is finding a luthier with access to an advanced CNC machine, not to mention the patience to undertake the request. Getting the artist to prepare the inlay for engraving wouldn't be difficult as its the same as preparing a digital file for printing, and could even be done without the guitar leaving the luthier's shop. However, the luthier would need to be familiar with that style of 'fill' inlay.

The thing with all this is that you yourself are having to do a lot of the leg work, and that's definitely annoying. Dylan was offering great value, expertise, and was getting great results while he was working, so why try to fix what isn't broken.

It's just that that was then, this is now. Even if Dylan magically came back and started working again, he's not accepting new orders, nor producing guitars ordered today for another 5+ years. Thus you have to seek out alternatives like the above.

Anyway, all that just to say that it can be done...budget and patience willing.

 

[narad]

I think you're vastly underestimating the art world, here. Dylan's art is great, and I don't want the takeaway from this comment to be that he's easily replaceable. However, there's absolutely artists working today with equal talent and vision as Dylan, capable of producing art analogous to even the most complex Daemoness builds.

Inlays are definitely a bit different, as they're not a widely practiced art outside of luthiery. This artist that you went to, did she specialise in inlay? I'd almost be inclined to seek out a marquetry or mosaic artist for a project like that. More on that later.

As for the 'metal aesthetic', that definitely is not a barrier to entry. To the extent that 'metal' has a cohesive aesthetic (and it's more a grouping of disparate styles), it's highly emulative of earlier art. Hell, just there's already thousands of tattoo artists working within that umbrella of styles, some of whom already do art commissions on the side. Instagram is full of them, and they're already used to hearing 'I want a Viking sword and a flaming bird, but make it all sick looking'.

What Daemonesses do you think are not able to be reproduced? I cannot think of a single example, myself, but then I also collect more art than guitars these days.

Also, while I'm mostly talking about the body art Dylan was being asked to draw and paint, Dylan's use of digital scanning and laser engraving/CNC to transfer his designs to the fretboard inlays makes those more easily replicable as well.

There, I'd say the biggest hurdle is finding a luthier with access to an advanced CNC machine, not to mention the patience to undertake the request. Getting the artist to prepare the inlay for engraving wouldn't be difficult as its the same as preparing a digital file for printing, and could even be done without the guitar leaving the luthier's shop. However, the luthier would need to be familiar with that style of 'fill' inlay.

The thing with all this is that you yourself are having to do a lot of the leg work, and that's definitely annoying. Dylan was offering great value, expertise, and was getting great results while he was working, so why try to fix what isn't broken.

It's just that that was then, this is now. Even if Dylan magically came back and started working again, he's not accepting new orders, nor producing guitars ordered today for another 5+ years. Thus you have to seek out alternatives like the above.

Anyway, all that just to say that it can be done...budget and patience willing.

As to the artist, yea, she was an inlay artist. I actually bought some of her old tools as sort of some compensation for what I had paid towards the inlay work. And again, that's tough -- definitely took work on her side, but I think I was in for over $500 with only some inlay materials to show for it.

As to what Daemonesses I don't think are going to be reproduced that way, any of the etching ones. You need to get a guitar with a maple top that's has the right amount and kind of figuring to fit the imagery, then you need to find someone who can do that negative etching sort of technique, and they have to be familiar enough with metal sorts of imagery to design and layout that sort of thing, and then implement it. Like everything has a price and I'm sure if you want to drop a ludicrous amount of money on it, and a ton of time, it's possible. Basically everything is. But I think it's going to be completely prohibitive -- and I've done a ton of leg work to get these sorts of projects done in the past.

I could see in the future, maybe being able to use a diffusion model so that the customer could generate a pretty precise idea of what the result should look like, and then basically the vision and design stuff is accounted for, would certainly be a big help. In my case, I probably spent 8 hours in communications to get that inlay going, that design iteration is just super painful and slow, and if I could just use that iterating on a design of my own, I think it could work out. And she definitely would have been able to execute it, so I could kind of see a successful outcome there. Maybe the same could be said for the negative etching. But really what I'm imagining in this "2-step" sort of thing, is that you buy a nice high end Jackson or something, and you send it to the second person for work. And these days, maple top Jackson customs are crazy expensive and don't have the right sorts of tops for that kind of design.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

As to the artist, yea, she was an inlay artist. I actually bought some of her old tools as sort of some compensation for what I had paid towards the inlay work. And again, that's tough -- definitely took work on her side, but I think I was in for over $500 with only some inlay materials to show for it.

As to what Daemonesses I don't think are going to be reproduced that way, any of the etching ones. You need to get a guitar with a maple top that's has the right amount and kind of figuring to fit the imagery, then you need to find someone who can do that negative etching sort of technique, and they have to be familiar enough with metal sorts of imagery to design and layout that sort of thing, and then implement it. Like everything has a price and I'm sure if you want to drop a ludicrous amount of money on it, and a ton of time, it's possible. Basically everything is. But I think it's going to be completely prohibitive -- and I've done a ton of leg work to get these sorts of projects done in the past.

I could see in the future, maybe being able to use a diffusion model so that the customer could generate a pretty precise idea of what the result should look like, and then basically the vision and design stuff is accounted for, would certainly be a big help. In my case, I probably spent 8 hours in communications to get that inlay going, that design iteration is just super painful and slow, and if I could just use that iterating on a design of my own, I think it could work out. And she definitely would have been able to execute it, so I could kind of see a successful outcome there. Maybe the same could be said for the negative etching. But really what I'm imagining in this "2-step" sort of thing, is that you buy a nice high end Jackson or something, and you send it to the second person for work. And these days, maple top Jackson customs are crazy expensive and don't have the right sorts of tops for that kind of design.

There's definitely been a few of those that were uniquely inspired designs. I think it is mostly a practical consideration, however. The artist being the same person physically going to the wood shop to select the guitar top blanks is an advantage for executing something like that. The rest is less important...particularly finding an artist with a 'metal vision'. The technical aspect isn't really worth commenting on. From an artistic point of view, an equally skilled draftsmen would have no problem executing any of those 'etched' designs you're referring to.

As a side note, I was researching a set of album covers a couple years back and discovered that the artist who drew Dio's Holy Diver cover has been working at Disney/Pixar for decades making kids movies. Isn't that just absolutely crazy? I can't imagine a wider gulf in style. Yet that's how professionals are. The obsession we sometimes have in the metal community of the outside world not understanding us is ridiculous in my opinion.

On cost:

Obviously this part is going to be less efficient. Suppose you could get Carillion or Waghorn to do a collaboration with your chosen artist. With that covered, there's the design of the artwork to be accounted for, which shouldn't be too expensive or difficult to accomplish remotely with the luthier's input on dimensions and wood choice.

Then there's however you get the art physically onto the guitar. For an inlay, doing CNC for a fill inlay could likely be done remotely. For the body art, I don't see how that could be accomplished to a Daemoness standard without the artist having access to the guitar. So, depending on whether the artist is in the same country as the luthier, that's going to make that step of the process harder and more expensive than it otherwise would be.

Having said that, your experience with that Art Nouveau inlay is a good example of some of the pitfalls of any artistic commission. Sometimes clients have poorly developed ideas, sometimes artists are not as skilled as they initially seemed, sometimes poor communication spoils the opportunity for good ideas on both sides to align. Having said that, many artists have extremely high success rates of customer satisfaction despite this not being an endorsement of the ease of working in their industry as a whole (the same is true of luthiery, of course). Looking again to the tattoo world, there's artists out there working at 'affordable' rates who field commission requests nearly every day and smash it out of the park without exception. I don't have any tattoos for the record, but I'm mentioning it again because those artists draw notice as incredibly adept draftsmen who have to quickly interpret client requests for bespoke designs and turn those around into stylistically distinctive art that fits within both their clients' expectations and their existing portfolio of work.

I think approaching a guitar this way could be easily affordable, even at a scope as large as the most elaborate Daemoness builds.

'Affordable' is obviously relative. But, again, the prices Dylan was charging were clearly not sustainable anyway, so discussing value from that perspective is a moot point.

 

[narad]

There's definitely been a few of those that were uniquely inspired designs. I think it is mostly a practical consideration, however. The artist being the same person physically going to the wood shop to select the guitar top blanks is an advantage for executing something like that. The rest is less important...particularly finding an artist with a 'metal vision'. The technical aspect isn't really worth commenting on. From an artistic point of view, an equally skilled draftsmen would have no problem executing any of those 'etched' designs you're referring to.

As a side note, I was researching a set of album covers a couple years back and discovered that the artist who drew Dio's Holy Diver cover has been working at Disney/Pixar for decades making kids movies. Isn't that just absolutely crazy? I can't imagine a wider gulf in style. Yet that's how professionals are. The obsession we sometimes have in the metal community of the outside world not understanding us is ridiculous in my opinion.

On cost:

Obviously this part is going to be less efficient. Suppose you could get Carillion or Waghorn to do a collaboration with your chosen artist. With that covered, there's the design of the artwork to be accounted for, which shouldn't be too expensive or difficult to accomplish remotely with the luthier's input on dimensions and wood choice.

Then there's however you get the art physically onto the guitar. For an inlay, doing CNC for a fill inlay could likely be done remotely. For the body art, I don't see how that could be accomplished to a Daemoness standard without the artist having access to the guitar. So, depending on whether the artist is in the same country as the luthier, that's going to make that step of the process harder and more expensive than it otherwise would be.

Having said that, your experience with that Art Nouveau inlay is a good example of some of the pitfalls of any artistic commission. Sometimes clients have poorly developed ideas, sometimes artists are not as skilled as they initially seemed, sometimes poor communication spoils the opportunity for good ideas on both sides to align. Having said that, many artists have extremely high success rates of customer satisfaction despite this not being an endorsement of the ease of working in their industry as a whole (the same is true of luthiery, of course). Looking again to the tattoo world, there's artists out there working at 'affordable' rates who field commission requests nearly every day and smash it out of the park without exception. I don't have any tattoos for the record, but I'm mentioning it again because those artists draw notice as incredibly adept draftsmen who have to quickly interpret client requests for bespoke designs and turn those around into stylistically distinctive art that fits within both their clients' expectations and their existing portfolio of work.

I think approaching a guitar this way could be easily affordable, even at a scope as large as the most elaborate Daemoness builds.

'Affordable' is obviously relative. But, again, the prices Dylan was charging were clearly not sustainable anyway, so discussing value from that perspective is a moot point.

Yea, I think the tattoo artist route is kind of interesting to consider. It seems at least thematically close to a lot of the Daemoness art.

I guess getting concrete about it, I feel like the closest you could do now is like hit up RIP, get a star destroyer, send it some tattoo artist for custom artwork, and hope that they can do paint work and hope for the best. Another problem though with these coordinations is what happens when something isn't as expected, which seems like always. @Samark has been going through this with the joinery on his guitar top for forever. I'm trying to simply coordinate one guy wiring up a custom pickguard with proprietary electronics for a build, and it's a nightmare going on 16 months over estimate. We have to talk about complications in guitar projects in like the same complexity that people talk about home renovation projects.