Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:36:52 +0000

• Adobe Flash CS4
• ActionScript 3.0
• Flash Navigation Code Animation
• AS3.0
• Flash

Product Description
This is more then just an eBook teaching you how to develop web sites using Adobe Flash as the lessons have been created to really help you understand this material. In addition to the written concepts there are also video tutorials and interactive presentations to help you learn in a number of different ways. Matthew Leach provides a fun and straight forward method to help you create your own professional web sites with animation and navigation using ActionScript 3.0. His practical methods cut all the fat from the typical textbook paperweights to focus on the most important practices used by todays professionals to help you create interactive Flash sites in no time.

Inside the Best Practice: Adobe Flash using AS 3.0 eBook you will learn:
Professional tips to create professional illustrations using the drawing tools.
The easiest techniques to create fun animations.
The most efficient uses of code to create interactive web sites.
The most organized methods of posting your work on your web hosting.
See examples from users of this book at: wynnpress [dot] com

About the Author
Matthew Leach, one of todays top college design professors, will teach you how to create fully functional Flash web sites using Adobe Flash with Actionscript 3.0. He has been teaching Adobe Flash at the college level for more then ten years and has the industry experience to teach what designers really need/want to understand.

Matthew has a keen sense of making the complicated easy and the difficult fun. Because he has spent so much time working with students both in a classroom and teaching them in an online environment, he has blended all the best technology features with the most helpful lectures to help designers learn Adobe Flash in a simple and straightforward manner. These ebooks he has written is his connection to sitting with you, walking you though the process, pointing out the most important tips along the way while teaching you how to identify and fix your own mistakes.
Best Practice: Adobe Flash Web Design using AS3.0

Those comic book superheroes were the inspiration for the characters in Adventures in Sex City whose job it is to defeat a former member of the Sex Squad – the Sperminator –who sustained an STI of his own. Captain Condom is half man-half condom with the power to stretch to any size, Wonder Vag has the power to tell if someone is lying and is a virgin saving herself for marriage; Power Pap is a sexually active hero with a strong belief in STI testing and the power to spot infections and Willy the Kid has rock hard strength and fights to prove size doesn't matter.

Francesca Geddes, 19, is a long-time Mindyourmind volunteer and was also a part of the game's design team. Ms. Geddes says the group didn't find much online in terms of comparable games so they took the information provided to them by the health unit and went about creating something totally unique.

"We went online to look for other games people had created. They asked us to create a game and posters. We went to other sites; we found a few things, maybe three games. There wasn't much out there. So we talked about what we liked, what we didn't like," Ms. Geddes says. "The health unit provided the content, but we edited the questions to make them more youth-friendly. I remember us sitting here, probably spending 20 minutes arguing about one question. Why are we using this word or that word, why is it phrased that way? It had to be in a language we would use. It was just the phrasing of the questions and the answers, because some of the answers were extremely long or were confusing and we didn't want that. We just wanted people to know straight facts."

Designing a game that teaches young people about sex creates many challenges, but Ms. Ali says the group was up to the challenge.

"We started sketching the characters, well, I think about names first, then we started sketching. Captain Condom was the first one; he was easy. We drew him out first. Then the story came really easily. We wanted two girls and two boys to keep a balance there, one sexually active, one not," Ms. Ali says. "We wanted it to make sense, not have people read it and be confused. Not be too clinical. That is why it is good with the answers after the questions, to explain everything that someone might want to know."

Heather Miko-Kelly, Mindyourmind's youth projects and volunteer coordinator, says the young people who came together to create the game really focused on something young people their age would relate to.

"There was lots and lots of brainstorming. They were looking at colours, at comic books, superheroes; there was a bunch of ideas of what the game would look like. And then they voted on it, talked about what we could do here, what we could do there," Ms. Miko-Kelly says. "They were tapping into what they knew would be relevant in their peer group. Pop culture, media. They were designing something they knew would appeal to young people their age."

Ms. Contursi says the game was designed to provide youth with the information they may be lacking when it comes to issues such as STI and testing. However, she is quick to add that one game can't do everything.

"It is pretty impossible to address all issues. One game can't address everything. The orientation of each of the characters is an assumption some users have been making," Ms. Contursi says. "The big thing is that all the bios, the sketches, the game play, the architecture, from beginning to end before it was handed off (to the actual game designer), the youth were involved in every aspect."

Interestingly, six of those youth are students at schools in the London District Catholic School Board – an organization that has declined to make use of the game.

"It is funny a large percentage of the youth were from CCH (Catholic Central High School) when the London District Catholic School Board is not allowing the game to be used," Ms. Miko-Kelly says. "The Thames Valley board is already using it in school presentations. But when the game came out, the Catholic boards official position is to teach abstinence. They have stated they won't be using it."

The Catholic board's position is one Ms. Ali finds ironic, as young people are most certainly already having sex.

"Our old principal says sexual activity is only appropriate within the sacraments of marriage and that the game isn't appropriate (referring to a statement made recently by Wilma de Rond, director of education for the Catholic board)," Ms. Ali says. "We know people are having sex in high school, we know it is going on. So why not let the game in when that is happening. Why pretend nobody is having sex in Catholic schools?"

The reaction of the Catholic board is hardly unique. Since the game's release on Feb. 11, there have been negative comments made about the game in the more mainstream media.

"It is funny to see the reaction on different links. On Perez Hilton (a popular celebrity gossip website) it was all positive, it is like I love this game, I've really learned something," Ms. Geddes says. "But then you go on the London Free Press or the Globe and Mail websites it is parents and adults saying I will never let my child play this game."

That position is one that Max Specht doesn't understand.

Max, 17, is another of the game designers and says many adults are missing the point when it comes to who young people listen to about sex.

"People are saying no, I will be the one to teach my kid about sex. No. The last thing we want is our parents talking to us about sex. Just give us the game. It is a different generation," Max says. "Scare tactics don't necessarily work. Not anymore. We all went through the questions before we even did the game and some of us were like wow, I didn't know that. We just wanted to get the information out there and get rid of some of the myths."

Ms. Geddes agrees, adding they have already had a lot of people saying they not only love the game, but are learning from it as well.

"I have talked to some people, a lot of my friends. People are laughing at first, but then they start playing, when they focus on the content and they start reading and understanding it, they do learn from it. They get a couple wrong and they are really surprised," Ms. Geddes says. "Some people may not have the relationship with their kids that others do. We aren't saying parents shouldn't talk to their kids. We are saying this is another option to help them learn about sex."

Darragh Lynch, 17, another of the design team, says young people get quickly frustrated when parents and adults don't give young people the option of learning for themselves about issues such as the jump in local STI rates and the importance of getting tested.

"It is very important that young people learn this. A lot of them know myths and think that is the way it is. This game teaches them the truth," Darragh says "It's very frustrating. They don't have our point of view. They don't take what we want into consideration. It wouldn't be a game for youth if it didn't include us. I think we like it because we are a part of it; it is for us."

As well received as the game has been by some groups, Ms. Geddes says there is a level of frustration that comes when the ages of the game designers aren't taken into account. However, she says the group is thrilled with the end results, adding it has achieved just what they were asked by the health unit to do.

"With this game it is coming across that the youth weren't as involved as we really were, and that is really frustrating because it was our ideas, our concepts. People are tearing it down thinking adults did it when really it was eight teenagers, young adults, involved in it," Ms. Geddes says. "We knew we would be offending someone, but we got people talking about the subject and that was our main goal. We brought attention to the rise in STI in the London areas. That was our main goal. We are trying to get people more educated about STI and how easy it can be to be tested."

Want to know more?

¦ To play the Adventures in Sex City game or to find out more about the initiative, visit the Middlesex-London Health Unit website at www.healthunit.com or visit the Mindyourmind website at www.mindyourmind.ca.