Prince Sutasoma: Children's Digital Comic Design Based on Kakawin Literature

Abstract

In the current digital era, transformation and digitization are strategic ways to strengthen and promote Old Javanese kakawin literature as one of the cultural objects in Indonesia. Digital transformation becomes a new space for the protection, development, utilization, and guidance of Old Javanese literature for the millennial generation. In connection with that, this article tries to introduce the transfer of Kakawin Sutasoma into the form of children's digital comics. Kakawin Sutasoma is an ancient Javanese literary work that contains local wisdom in the form of the Catur Paramita concept, Pancasila ideology, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika motto, and national character values, including tolerance, hard work, discipline, honesty, creativity, friendship, social care, and responsibility. The value of national character is important to be instilled in children from an early age through the media of children's digital comics based on Kakawin Sutasoma. In addition, the cultivation of national character values through children's digital comics based on Kakawin Sutasoma is important to protect the millennial generation from the negative impact of digital comics, video games, and animated films with foreign cultural themes that are prone to cause cultural disruption. This research is designed as qualitative research and is multidisciplinary. Data collection was carried out by integrating text study methods and children's digital comic creation methods. Data analysis was carried out by applying the method of transferring vehicles and creating children's digital comics based on the working principles of literary theory and comics theory. The results of data analysis and creation are presented in the form of prototypes of children's digital comics. The invention and novelty of this article lie in the development of the research methodology, which integrates literary assessment methods and the creation of digital comics simultaneously. This article contains a new finding that Kakawin Sutasoma was created in 1370, during the reign of King Hayam Wuruk in Majapahit. Moreover, the way of analyzing why the text of Kakawin Sutasoma was chosen as the source of inspiration for the creation of the Digital Comic of Prince Sutasoma, how the text of Kakawin Sutasoma is treated in the Digital Comic of Prince Sutasoma, and the contribution of the Digital Comic of Prince Sutasoma to Kakawin Sutasoma in this article can be used as an example by other researchers.