Doc Brown's 2015 Red Chinese Shirt

[Indy Magnoli]

I'm trying to reproduce the designs on Doc's red 2015 shirt:

The photo above is from the recent ads, but the costume seems original (as discussed elsewhere: http://www.therpf.com/f24/back-future-doc-brown-126432/).

In any case, I was able to isolate some of the characters on the shirt, one of which is Chinese for Love:

I found the identical character (meaning, the exact same image/font/whatever) on this page: http://earlywomenmasters.net/tao/ch_10.html:

There must be a font somewhere with all of these characters as I've found this image pop up on a few other websites, but no one sources their origin.

If anyone is interested in helping recreate this, let me know. I'll be making one shirt for a customer, after which I can offer these to anyone else interested.

Kind regards,
Magnoli

 

[Indy Magnoli]

This bump is a plea for help...

 

[Roland]

Here's a font file (in my attached ZIP file). I'm too lazy to search for the exact symbols from Doc's shirt, but the style of the symbols seems to be exactly the same. Good luck!

 

[Indy Magnoli]

Super, thanks! Do you have the HDZB_25 font? I think that might be the one used in the black squares.

Kind regards,
Magnoli

 

[Indy Magnoli]

Well... I just went through the font and couldn't find a single character from Doc's shirt. It's a needle-in-a-haystack scenario when you don't know Chinese, so I've sent this to a couple of friends, one of which is a native of China. Maybe we'll get lucky. If anyone would like to join the search, let me know and I can send you some high-res shots of the characters we're looking for...

 

[Roland]

... I can send you some high-res shots of the characters we're looking for...

You have hi-res pictures of all characters on the shirt? So why didn't you say that before? I have a little bit experience in re-drawing letters.

 

[Indy Magnoli]

High res images here: Doc's 2015 Outfit | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[Roland]

High res images here: Doc's 2015 Outfit | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The pictures are very good. I'll see what I can do for you.

Just to make sure that I don't miss a character: How many different characters are on the shirt?

 

[Indy Magnoli]

I haven't actually counted them but there is certainly a repeating pattern.

 

[Indy Magnoli]

According to my Chinese friend, some of the words on the shirt may be the same, but in different fonts...

 

[IMIM2]

in the columns it has repeat every 5 characters. As in the row, I counted 7 and still not repeating. Therefore at least 35 characters.
Not including randomly placed other characters with black outline.

I wonder where the buttons are, probably at the back.
Or this was just front half of the shirt

 

[YenChih Lin]

Love 愛

friend, in this case friendship 友

good/well 好

serenity 寜

tranquil 安

kind/benevolent/charitable 慈

I guess this 況 is condition/situation as far as I can read the calligraphy

stable/solid/firm/steady 穩 (or other writing "simpler" variation 稳)

quiet/still/motionless/gentle 静

be happy/happiness 喜

These are what I can read so far. I gotta see the lower shirt part in a better resolution, there are other words I see not listed here.

EDIT: adding new logograms
be in harmony 洽

This is a guess, but would make sense: pure/clean/simple 純

decide/settle/fix 定

There are still at least 2-3 missing words I can't read because of the low resolution, I have to identify them, how the words are composited.

 

[Roland]

Searching for the words that YenChih Lin listed, I found the following images. They are all from the same font, but only a few of them matches the characters on the shirt exactly. I found it on www.cinske-znaky.cz. Tell me if you need it as vectorized graphics!

 

[YenChih Lin]

I do also have the font and can save the words into SVG…

 

[YenChih Lin]

Damn! There's not bigger picture of Doc's shirt and some fonts don't comply to CJK standard under Ubuntu, so I have the clerical font but can't apply on inkscape :angry

 

[YenChih Lin]

Interesting… the shirt of the commercial is different than from the movie, the word on his left collar is different, the words are diffrent, even the black/white chinese seal is a different one. It seems that the pattern is much more plastered with the seals.

Seems the 2011 shirt has been re-tailored from scratch in the style of the 1989 shirt. The quilting of the '89 isn't as heavy as the '12.

Supplemental: There are two different seals on the 2012 shirt as opposed to the '89, which seems to have only one kind of seal as far as I can tell.

Supplemental 2: The writing style is also different, not a clerical style but a calligraphy style.

Supplemental 3: The words are mostly upside down in the 89 shirt. The '12 shirt must be made by someone, who at least know what to do.

 

[Indy Magnoli]

Great work guys! That last shot shows the front flap closure, so at least I know how it is constructed. What about the Flower designs? Anyone want to tackle that?

-Magnoli

 

[Contec]

Great work guys! That last shot shows the front flap closure, so at least I know how it is constructed. What about the Flower designs? Anyone want to tackle that?

-Magnoli

I made my own a few months ago.
And here is the drawing for the flower that i used (huge picture :

Spoiler

These are the symbols that i was able to find on the shirt

Spoiler

Mine on the left , real on the right

I guess you have this picture ?:

Spoiler

I made stamps from hobby foam:

 

[Roland]

Great work guys! That last shot shows the front flap closure, so at least I know how it is constructed. What about the Flower designs? Anyone want to tackle that?

-Magnoli

Should this be a reproduction of the screen used shirt or the 2011 replica? The flowers are different on both shirts.

 

[Indy Magnoli]

We want to follow the original as much as possible.