Media arts internship February 3, 2015

The managing editor of the site, David Coleman, finished listening to our Top 30 prospect special and sent myself and Brooks Parkers, one of the co-hosts of the show. We discussed tone and format in the email and have decided to make a few changes next year. I also got feedback from a listener that I took into consideration and responded to. It was positive and constructive feedback. He enjoyed the show overall, but would have liked us to give a short description on each player. The Astros have made a lot of trades the past few years. Throw in the draft and there are a lot of new faces making their way to the minor league club. A short description would have been helpful. I added that feedback to our notes so that we would remember it for next year.

Along with that we’re looking at restricting the people who focuses on the minor leagues throughout the season and have certain exceptions as long as the meet a certain criteria. One of the thing that seemed to come out of the podcast feedback which we got not only via email but through social media, was that we seemed to be down on guys that were ranked higher than the collective group. To address that we’re going to limit who grades prospects in the future.

Media arts internship February 2, 2015

I spent the night creating an infographic that highlighted the transactions the Astros have made this offseason. It’s a very simple design and is a call back to my days as a gamer. My inspiration came from this flowchart: http://www.downfallguild.org/node/8602

I did something along the same lines and included the transactions plus a little reasoning for each transaction. I won’t reveal the infographic just yet because we want to have a post accompany it.

Media arts internship January 30, 2015

I started preparing for my next two infographics by gathering some data. My next one will be an infographic that highlights all the transactions the Astros have made this past season. The other will be an infographic that covers the Astros Spring Training roster. Currently about 57 player have been invited to Spring Training. As players are moved down to the minors or released I will update the infographic with that information.

The other thing I did was fix my scheduling goof. In scheduling the dailys countdown memes I noticed I had skipped a day and so the last 10 days were off by one day. I had to delete those 10 and start rescheduling with the correct pictures on the correct day.

Media arts internship January 28-29, 2015

After getting the design down I spent Wednesday night putting the rest of the play information in on the infographic. After getting it completed I repositioned some of the players so all 30 would be lined up and fit on the infographic. I then went back and checked each Name and their profile for any spelling errors. After completing the graphic and I uploaded it to the website for distribution.

On Thursday I edited the podcast we had recorded on Monday to distribute in a post Friday. I then created a post for the infographic to be posted. Nothing special, I just placed the infographic then reached 150 words for search engine optimization purposes (SEO) with facts about the list. Here’s the infographic in all it’s glory.

Media arts internship January 27, 2015

Tonight I edited and uploaded the third and final hour of audio for our TCB Top 30 Astros Prospect special. I also updated the RSS feed with the information for the second hour, which will release Wednesday. I then started the graphics work on my infographic for our Top 30. This is what I have so far:

I am using a gradient for the background. It starts orange at the top and shifts to blue at the bottom. I added a texture to the background at the suggestion of the graphics artist on staff Ryan Dunsmore. I used a picture of some ground at the Astros Spring Training that my daughter took while we were there last year. I had to duplicate it to get it the full length of the infographic and then drop the opacity. Now that I have the design I just need to fill in the other 24 names, which I plan to work on Wednesday.