Elaborating Visual Narrative into Modern Adaptation Concept for Picture Book with Indonesian Folklore Theme

Abstract

Folklore shows how a culture brings its point of view and values. It is also an agent of social values such as honesty, kindness, forgiveness, and many more. Through picture book, message from folklore can lead children understanding their society. These aspects are reasons why folklore becomes a favourite genre in picture book. Hence, some argue that folklore also store up cruelty and intimidating content which are not suitable for children. This leads creator and publisher to keep up with new way of adaptation. For example, by combining the method of modern storytelling technique and the art visual narration into the plot. The objective of this study is to design a new adaptation method for Indonesian folklore story by elaborating visual narrative into its story and illustration. By creating the formula, this study will not only help conserving Indonesian folklore stories, but also help delivering social values to children without the need of frighten the readers. This study follows a qualitative method by observing and existing Indonesian folklore books, which then categorized into three genres: Mythology, folktales, and fables. Samples from each category were then picked based on its popularity. A data collection of modern storytelling method and visual narrative literature were also done, which then mapped out into an adaptation concept suitable for children. The results show that visual narrative approach especially in visualizing characters and stage does help creating a modern stage of folklore adaptation. Adjustment of text-visual ratio along with plot simplification and reduction or removal of violence aspects also help creating a child-friendly folklore adaptation. Moreover, a picture book prototype was created to evaluate the result. It received positive response from The Asian Festival of Children's Content (AFCC) 2018 and London Book Fair 2019. Three of its illustration won awards from ASEAN Children's Book Illustrator (ICCRF) 2018.