Indonesian Traditional Story Content in Animated Short Film:Case Study Students’ Animated Short Film Final Project

Abstract

In Indonesia, generation who were born in late 1970 and beginning 1980 have more access to entertainment, compared to earlier generations. They read storybooks, children maga-zine and comic books, and listened to stories through audio-cassette and radio. There were various contents to choose from, H.C Andersen and Brothers Grimm's classic stories, Disney's classic fairy tales, European and American super hero comic books, and Indonesian traditional stories. Indonesian traditional stories were introduced and brought by local children magazines and recorded stories from audio-cassette. As an effort to conserve local traditional content, Students of Animation specialization under Faculty of Art and Design in Universitas Multimedia Nusantara, are encouraged to promote local and traditional stories in their works. It means the students will have to explore forgotten Indonesian traditional stories, interpret and create narratives, and visualize it in animated short film. When the research took place, most students are born around 1997-2000. It was the era where Reformation took place in Indonesia and the access to anime were even easier and more various, anime became solid part of children's daily entertainment. This article tries to explain students' work in visualizing traditional story content through short animated film. We try to make connection on how the students visualize traditional story content with reference from the most vary and the most accessible reference in their era, Anime. This is an exploratory research, we try to explain referred condition using two students' final project works as case studies. The expected result is to understand better how a more accessible reference becomes more influential in students' works, and how it will/will not create a new alternative to traditional story content and visual style in Indonesian animated film's future. First, this article will describe the popular genre and visual style shifting phenomenon in children's entertainment in Indonesia in the 1990's, and how it is connected to how students visualize traditional content in their animated short film. Selected students' works will be discussed based on the description of the condition. The analysis is limited on how the students visualize the story and the structure, and how they design the characters.