One aspect of my project was the removal of the puzzle pieces to view what had happened during the Armenian Genocide. When you flip the right hand side of the comics up you find what one Armenian had done after surviving the death march which was when the Turkish soldiers took groups of armenians out into the desert. After a while they shot and hit the armenians upside the head. On the right hand side of the box i told the story of the Armenian that had survived the death march.
CJ Harrison
Armenia Box of Horrors
Back in 1915, the year the genocide happened, a man named Talaat Pasha which was a leader in Turkey, had feared that the Armenians were going to join the USSR during WW1. So he told troops to go kill the Armenians to make sure they weren’t going to join the USSR. So the troops went out, arrested 250 Armenian leaders, and killed male Armenians along with sexually abusing the female Armenians.
When I came across the idea of my first comic, I had looked at this website that I really thought was an interesting which is “theforgoten.com”. If you go to the survivors I had looked up a couple peoples podcasts and one had talked about how it started and how they took groups out and killed them in the desert which is now Syria. I had taken this hardly because it was painful to listen to the way she told the story so I instantly said I have to put that in my project. So the reason why I had made this comic is because of this person’s story.
In my research I had come across this website called “Armeniahouse.org”, which gave me a very long article on the trail of Talaat Pasha. I had been reading this article and after a while I had come across this part where the man says “, I crossed the street behind him and followed him for a while, once I came to the best place and time I pulled out my revolver and shot him”, which gave me the idea of making The second layer of the comic to give an overview of Talaat Pasha.
I guess what I’m trying to get you to think is that this genocide was full of horrible things. First it was a person who didn’t want the Armenians to join the enemies. Soldiers went out to stop them from joining the enemies. Abused the female Armenians and killed male Armenians. One survivor killed Talaat pasha. Finally, all the Armenian leaders were hung for good measures.
You may be wondering how I got the whole box idea. Well I had originally said I want different layers with the different stages of this project. I had changed my idea to one layer that was a puzzle and you have to take the pieces out to see the comic. Then I thought OH! I could put a box with a door, you open it and there’s the puzzle. Then I thought that the comic wasn’t enough so I added the part on how Talaat Pasha was killed and agreed to leave it like that because I really liked it.
Genocide Project Reflection
CJ Harrison
During the making of my final product I had come across some difficulties and I had to re-cut my wood but unfortunately I didn’t have any more material for that specific type of wood. I had gone to home depot to try to find that wood but they didn’t have any so I was getting very worried and I didn’t know where else it would have been. So when I got home I looked through all the wood I had and I still found nothing of that sort so I just got a random piece of wood and cut it out to be the bottom of the box because no one is going to be looking at the bottom so I wasn’t too worried about it. During exhibition no one had noticed the bottom when they flipped over the cartoon so I was glad that it wasn’t a big problem at all.
If I had one more week to work on this project I would have done so much more. First off I would have gotten some light wood instead of cardboard to glue my cartoons on. I also would have done a way better job of being able to flip up the cartoons to view the person who killed Talaat Pasha by putting string instead of a piece of paper that was hot glued to the paper. I also would have added the Armenian flag before the Turkish flag, tell the story of the Armenians and then you lift that up and it’s the Turkish flag and you take out those pieces and there is the Turkish story and then flip the over and there is the Armenian who killed Talaat Pasha.
In my final product I felt like I had done an amazing job because it was very engaging for the audience and everyone who looked at it was having fun taking the puzzle pieces out and reading about each individual comic strip and what happened during the Armenian genocide. I also had one person almost cry because they were heart broken and she told me about how heart breaking that was and how it is a horrible thing and that were lucky to not have been in a genocide were we live. Overall I think I did best in the category mainly because a lot of people were having fun moving things and learning about it in different ways and two completely different stories during the genocide.
The weakest part of my project I would have to say is the professionalism because I still had some parts where I still needed to erase the pencil marks. I also could have done a much better job on the title which was on the cover of the box because it was really choppy and didn’t look good and could have been neater like adding a second coat of paint to cover up the smudges. I also could have glued the left side of the comic so that people didn’t lift up the whole comic to see what was underneath the whole thing instead of just one side. After all, my project turned out good it was just the small things that I could have fixed to make my project that much better.
For all the categories I would have to give myself a B, 85%. I think this because I worked really hard to think of an Idea and put it together because I needed my dad there to help me use his tools to cut the wood and get everything rite and he usually doesn’t get home till 6:00pm. So I spent from 6:00-8:00 every night working with my dad and figuring out how to put everything and the size of the puzzle which I messed up the coloring and had to figure out how to fix it without smearing the paint. So every day I basically got home at around 6 and worked until I had to go to sleep except for when I got the puzzle pieces done then I just got time to mess around because I was practically finished with everything. For my final grade I would have to give myself a B+, 88%
