craftgrrl | Questions about embroidery vs. appliques (Reply)

All right, this is a rather image heavy entry. Now, I've been wanting to make Uo-chan from Fruits Basket's trench coat for awhile. Now that I'm learning how to sew and have found a great tutorial on how to make motorcycle jackets (since I'm not really a trench coat kinda person and moto jackets are HAWT), I figure I'll start this project sooner than I thought. The only problem is that I don't want to paint on the designs and whatnot. I was thinking either embroidery or appliques, but I'm an idiot and don't really know A) Which would be better for this project and B) What the real difference between the two is. Could anyone help me out?