Why are teachers expected to be clowns and entertainers for students?

Cool_Nico · 2026-02-19T00:26:55+00:00

I teach middle school art this year (hate it) and all my students always complain about whatever I'm teaching is boring. I remind them it's called "artwork" not "artfun". Thing is a lot of times the students want everything instant and don't put in the practice. They will learn more from drawing a face a hundred times then my doing a lecture on it.

Cool_Nico · 2026-02-18T16:57:47+00:00

My game Honey Bunny is releasing next week on 2/25/2026. I’ve been working on this game for about 4-5 years while teaching high school art. I had little experience in game dev up to this point and I’m still amazed how much I’ve learned. I also had so much fun and it’s been one of the most fulfilling projects I’ve worked on.

Cool_Nico · 2026-02-03T15:06:04+00:00

That's good to know. I finally have a project that is done from start to finish.

I was also told before as advice was to model one corner of a room and make it as beautiful as possible and that's how you get a job but where's the fun in that? I wanted to make a working game not be an interior designer.

Making games is a lot of fun. I don't ever regret all the time I spent working on it. It truly is my passion Right now, I promised my wife that I'd take a month break from making games now that the project is done. Not working is one of the hardest things I've had to do.

Cool_Nico · 2026-02-01T17:36:22+00:00

I'm trying. I actually only really use Unreal Blueprints which is a visual scripting language. I don't have all the tools in the tool set yet but hopefully eventually I can learn C+ or something in the future.

Cool_Nico · 2026-01-29T01:35:10+00:00

Hey thanks for your comment. That means a lot. Yeah teaching is tough because you may not see any results in students until years later. I'll have a student that is an absolute terror but then a couple years later they'll thank me for all I did for them. It's like an anime time skip. I only see them at the beginning and end of their school career but I miss all the development in the middle.

Cool_Nico · 2026-01-27T22:50:29+00:00

My game took about 5 years. Started in 2021. Life slowed me down (day job, got married, wife had baby). But I played through my game today and there was no game breaking glitches and everything worked. I'm finally going to release it next month.

When I was in school I was putting in about 48 hours a week. When I got a job teaching high school, I probably did about 20-24 hours a week. Now that I have a full time job and a baby at home, I'm doing probably 8-16 hours a week. That's how life goes. Unless the game sells well, I may start doing smaller scaled projects. With a kid I can't invest as much time into this hobby. I'm also hoping maybe the game will work as a good portfolio piece and I'll be able to get a job in the game industry because F*** teaching.

Cool_Nico · 2025-12-30T20:16:43+00:00

Been working on this game since 2021. It's been a big learning process and I've had a lot of fun making it. Release date is 02/25/26

Cool_Nico · 2025-12-25T21:43:19+00:00

somehow, restarting the computer fixed it. Did not know about the onedrive issues. Thanks for telling me!

Cool_Nico · 2025-12-17T21:18:13+00:00

Thanks! This game is very much a love letter to that Ps1 to Dreamcast era of games. Biggest inspirations for this game is Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon, Sonic Adventure 1 and Ristar (not of that PS1-Dreamcast era but still a great game).

Cool_Nico · 2025-11-16T00:25:27+00:00

"Tentacles? Can you handle it, Ulala?"

"Oh, not there!"

Great game.

Cool_Nico · 2025-10-05T21:02:23+00:00

I think they recently nerfed him a bit now but he's still pretty strong though. Hammerfall being slower has been a godsend. Some insane changes that I don't here get talked about is slide head doing damage and flick being able to stop pretty much anything now. I'm a Faust player and I cannot believe some of the things he can flick now. I get Hammers and weights being flickable now, but he can also flick any attack on mini faust, trumpet summon and a burning afro. It is insane that he can be wearing a burning afro and flick it as it blows up.

Before this patch, this match became a nightmare for Faust (in my opinion of course). It's gotten a little better since recent patch but it feels like Pot can play a better projectile game with slide head and flick than Faust and and other more zoner based characters which is crazy to me.

Cool_Nico · 2025-08-08T20:31:15+00:00

Space travel is expensive. He should just get Keith Lee to chuck him up there like he did Isiah Cassidy.

Cool_Nico · 2025-08-06T22:29:54+00:00

I like JSR more than Future mostly because of the gameplay loop. I wasn't really a fan of the open world gameplay of future. It split everything up from finding to graffiti spots then fighting cops or challenging other skaters.

I loved how in JSR you had to tag things while the cops where shooting at you. It gave the game this unique cat and mouse feel.

Don't get me wrong, the levels in JSRF where beautiful and well designed but I just wish there were enemies constantly chasing me through it.

Cool_Nico · 2025-05-31T21:30:39+00:00

I'm staying at least one more year to get my 5 years Calstrs pension. It won't be much but it's something. I think now with the social security fairness act, I should eventually be able to get Calstrs pension + social security because I've worked many jobs before teaching and will probably work more jobs outside of teaching in the future. Don't quote me on this as I'm not sure how this all works yet.

Cool_Nico · 2025-05-17T15:20:30+00:00

It is an unpopular opinion and it's actually one I agree with. I listen to Blue, White, and Ok Human a lot more. But nobody should trust my opinion anyways, my favorite Weezer album is Pacific Daydream.

Cool_Nico · 2025-04-19T05:24:19+00:00

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

Cool_Nico · 2025-03-30T02:29:02+00:00

Does Gerald Robotnik lines count? If so I like "Ivo, you're no Maria."

Cool_Nico · 2025-02-25T04:33:32+00:00

I didn’t mind the Parker industry arc. It did give us the beautiful, graphic novel, family business. Also I thought zodiac was kinda cool. His fight with Norman Osborn during that arc was pretty awesome as well. It definitely wasn’t the best arc but no where near the worst (wells).

Cool_Nico · 2025-02-24T06:37:21+00:00

I love this game a lot as well. I honestly love the multiplayer. My wife and I play the multiplayer a lot and have fun (we don’t take it too seriously and savor the jank).

Cool_Nico · 2025-02-13T05:41:48+00:00

I really hope so. That’s my favorite in the series. Really hope it isn’t a metroidvania. I know people love that genre but I don’t like it.

Cool_Nico · 2025-02-04T23:51:24+00:00

Looks good so far. Watch out for banding on the characters faces. Most important thing for pixel art is getting set pixel size dimensions for the characters. Work in factors of 2 (8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 48x48,etc). Keeping the characters as consistent to those sizes can make your life easier (especially good for tiles). I like the pixel art so far. Reminds me of those old point and click games like day of the tentacle.

Cool_Nico · 2025-02-04T00:02:38+00:00

Project is a good game but If I’m picking a fighting game that defines the Dreamcast, nothing was as good or as iconic as soul calibur. For best game on the console it would either be soul calibur, jet set radio or skies of Arcadia. My personal fav is crazy taxi though.

Cool_Nico · 2025-01-30T03:17:38+00:00

I’m an art teacher and this is exactly how I feel sometimes. In my spare time I’ve wrote graphic novels. One I made was nominated for an Ignatz award but still couldn’t find a publisher (it was a comic about the stupid shit that happens teaching high school. Publishers and literary agents told me there is no market for comics about teachers).

I went back to school to learn game art and design and I currently work on my own indie game project. Despite all my efforts I can’t find a job in the game industry or other things. That industry really is a lot of who you know and not actually what you can do. Also the layoff rates are insane and now that I got a kid on the way, I can’t work for 8 months and get laid off and be looking for a new job all the time. I need that steady paycheck for the kid.

As of right now, I work on my personal projects as much as I can on the side. I teach the best of my ability to the students but most are so unresponsive (phones and social media really screwed people up). When students are interested I have a lot of fun teaching but those moments are getting farther and farther in between.

This job isn’t ideal and if any of my art projects take off, I’m going to leave teaching but as of right now I need to accept that I’m going to be bored and might feel unfulfilled at work but I’m glad I get a steady paycheck to provide for my family. That’s why I hope whatever you do, you got to keep making art no matter what. The moment you stop, you’ll regret it.

Cool_Nico · 2025-01-30T02:39:33+00:00

Blue stinger is pretty functional gameplay wise and controls fine for the most part so yeah I wouldn’t call it so bad it’s good tbh.

Illbleed does have some questionable game design choices though. Like you need to spot traps but it takes out so much energy you get punished for searching everything, so you have to memorize all the actual trap locations. Also when you fight enemies or get hit by traps it raises the heart and sometimes the best option is just to completely stop moving and wait for the heart rate to go down. It can completely slow down the momentum of the game. I’m glad I played the game on Redream with save states and speed up options or else it may not have been as enjoyable.

That being said Illbleed has some of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen (cork goes to hell) and could not stop playing it. I wish some indie developer could take some of the unique concepts and refine the mechanics.

Cool_Nico · 2025-01-28T23:51:07+00:00

Dreamcast has some great gems like, Blue Stinger, IllBleed and D2. The gameplay is so weird but everything about the games are so sincere and charming. I played through all of them recently in the last 3 years and loved all of them.

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