A how to question

Before committing to the designer and client, I am trying to figure out if the following is possible.

I was given a home page design that has a large image at the top that is a rotator (full width of page). It sits in the background and on top of that rotating slideshow or slider, are four image buttons that link to different parts of the site (or other sites) -- the buttons do not change while the background image is changing/rotating (3 or 4 images that rotate in background). The buttons are a solid image/photo but whatever they are sitting on is totally transparent so there is no "colored background bar" for them. This is a theme/design the designer gave me for the full/wide screen & I am making a determination if I can do this or do we need to change this before going back to the client (of course, this is a theme the designer gave the client and the client chose before I got involved).

I've done similar where the images are actually located in a row below the slider, moved them up with negative margin and used z-index to make the two layers sit correctly. Just wondering if there is some easier way? Is there a similar theme or module, etc.

maryann