Cleft Lip / Palate Support Group
Cleft is a congenital deformity caused by a failure in facial development during gestation. It can be treated with surgery shortly after birth with highly successful results. Cleft occurs in somewhere between one in 600 and one in 800 births. Cleft occurs in several severities and is divided in two major categories: cleft lip and cleft palate.
Soo , if you would like the full story about my project for my computer art class I recommend you take a look at my first journal I made here for more details.
But to boil it down, basically for the project we had to photoshop a collage/self portrait and then animated it in after effects. I chose to photoshop myself with my once visible bilateral cleft lip as a means of self reflection but also to display my pride in who I am as someone who was born with a malformation. I didn’t let it slow me down, in fact I accepted it as part of me. I hope to inspire others, who were born with facial malformations, to have more confidence in themselves.
EDIT: Okay, I wasn't able to upload a video here. So i'll give you guys a link to watch it:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgFg3xZDYtu/?taken-by=opalscorpion
The inclusion of you as a baby and now is cool, even though it does not show the equally important path to get there.
I find it a bit short personally, but I'm guessing it was a subect-imposed limitation ?
Also, have you been using raster images straight from PS into AE ? Or did you vectorize them later ? (I'm only a recent graphic design student, but I'm def interested in motion design and more as well).
I had my last surgery a few years ago. It was a benefit of naval service, so in a way it was the first time I'd ever initiated the process and made the decision on my own, even "paid" for it with 4 years working with people that mostly despised me. The results were really good; they seriously cut down on my scars and improved my nose and profile; a little uneven spot under my nose was the only downside... but, by that time, my hair was starting to go like my dad's, and I'm still getting use to that. Can't have your cake and eat it too, I guess.
And to be honest, sometimes I feel it's too easy now for people to pretend they "just don't see" my cleft. Like some people claim they "just don't see" skin color and are "colorblind", there sure seems to be a lot of "cleft-blind" people out there. The sense that you can't get accurate feedback from people about cleft is one of the most frustrating aspects to me. My apologies to anyone reading this who would give their right arm for their cleft to be less noticeable. It's just how I see it. Cleft is a part of who I am (it neither defines nor is irrelevant to my identity) and I wish I had more folks to talk about it with.