Long Hu Bao
龙虎豹
Dragon Tiger Leopard
"食咩补咩" -- "You are what you eat"
This is a belief and discipline followed in Chinese eating culture. Wild animals and poisonous insects are considered to be the most beneficial. The same rule applies as well in the field of medications. Herbal medicine companies In Area of Canton and Hong Kong are fond of printing fierce animals on their packaging to exaggerate the strength and benefits of the drugs: scorpion, lion, tiger, leopard and even dragon.
These animals combined with 20-plus different symptoms printed on a package that a drug claims to treat, results in this flamboyant packaging fashion.
This concept of this project is applying this unique visual style in apparel, to advertise an herbal medicine brand, something that's not supposed to be advertised, something that's not supposed to be advertised in such way, something that might not even exist.
Embroidery carries its own value in its colorful threads and intricate stitches, and it brings these value onto the hoodie. The hoodie is a form of advertising for the herbal medicine. But in reverse, the medicine provide the clothing with the visual and style, thus bringing value to it.
Process
The illustration was first drawn and composed, then imported in Adobe Illustrator to define the segments. Adjacent segments were offset to provide tolerance for sewing. Then the paths were imported to Tajima DG/ML to assign stitches, sequences, commands, etc. The sequences were optimized in the software to reduce sewing time and chances to switch between threads. A preview was then generated to assist the sewing, providing steps with corresponding thread colors.
Several tests were conducted in order to get the best results for sewing on hoodie material (cotton/polyester). In the final file, a run stitch was added to the beginning to secure the fabric with backing. Moreover, underlays were assigned to each big block of solid stitching to ensure the fabric doesn't move or stretch while sewing.
Prototypes were also conducted to represent light and shadow on the animals in different ways, later incorporated into the files.
