Media arts internship February 8, 2015

I finished the Spring Training roster graphic:

I still need to go back and make sure that all the names are spelled correctly and make sure everything is aligned correctly.

I also updated the bracket graphic we use for our March Madness series that runs through Spring Training. It’s a fun event that helps our community get through Spring Training, while learning a little bit about each player. We have two players faceoff against each by reader vote. The player with the most votes after a 24-hour period advances to the next round. I’ve run it the last two years, but handed it off to someone else this year so that I could focus on my media arts internship. However, I’ll be doing the graphics for the event. That includes updating the graphic and creating the images for use with the posts.

The bracket is the first thing that needs to be done, because it gives us the matchups for the posts. This year I decided to seed them by last years results and sprinkle all the new acquisitions into the bracket. Because I was using the graphic from last year all I had to do was click on each spot and type in the new name for that spot. I then had to get the dates for each round and update them at the top.

I of course need to go back through this one as well and tighten up alignment and any fix any spelling errors. 

Media arts internship February 7, 2015

Worked on the post for offseason transaction flowchart post. After I finished the infographic I had sent it to the listserv for feedback. I figured the gaming reference would be lost by most, which is fine because it’s not necessary to understand the graphic. What I didn’t realize was that some didn’t get the John Madden reference or thought I meant Joe Madden, who is the current major league manager for the Chicago Cubs. In the post I tried to account for those references. I also wrote up a statistics and facts section to go along with the flowchart that I realized I should probably put on the infographic at the bottom. I am currently traveling so I will have to do that when I get home. I also might throw some other graphics onto flowchart next to the names of players. Currently I have one image of the Astros GM at the top and four for the players acquired this offseason. The astros acquired a total of 10 players this offseason. I was going to schedule for Tuesday but I’ll have to push that back to Thursday or Friday.

While browsing social media I found a tweet that was worth a FanShot on our site. A FanShot is a short post meant to highlight an interesting link, video, social media post or other form of media quickly. They don’t take long to setup and can sometimes bring in some decent traffic to the site.

http://www.crawfishboxes.com/2015/2/7/7998819/best-tweet-ever

I then continued my work on the Spring Training Astros roster. I had to increase the canvas size a few times to get the space right for all the names and words. I added some color to the graphic in sections. I then had a discussion with our graphics artists on the site, Ryan, about it and asked him for feedback. He suggested giving it a spreadsheet texture. I went and screenshotted a spreadsheet from Google Docs and put that unders the names and words, but over the colors and background. I then lowered the opacity so the color could come through. Ryan had also suggested to drop the intensity of the color, which the spreadsheet texture did for me. Overall I’m happy with the progress, but I’ll need to break out the names individually. I had them in sections, but to make them fit on the spreadsheet correctly I need to break them out individually. This will also allow me to more easily dim the words when a player is removed from the Spring Training roster. I intend to have all the names start with a drop shadow, and the take that effect away and drop the opacity, when a player is taken off the roster.

Here's the first version:

Here's the second version:

Media arts internship February 6, 2015

I worked on creating the Astros Spring Training roster infographic. I got all the names down on the infographic, then realized I should have picked the font and size before doing that because I had to go back and change the font and size for everything. I then started trying to figure out how I was going to lay everything out with the information I needed. I probably need increase the size of the canvas to get everything to fit and not look so squashed together.

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.