How Doug TenNapel Built a Koi Pond

I’ve always had a thing for amphibians and often post about them on Facebook. For most of my life I’ve raised newts, frogs, salamanders and toads. But this koi pond will be the largest expansion of my amphibian sanctuary dreams.

Below is a picture of my backyard as I started to plan out the koi pond. Our family put in all of the tile last year, so I already gained some experience with cutting stone and doing a little cement work. This area was either going to be a garden or a pond and I went with a pond. Little did I know that what I thought would take two weeks would become a monster month-and-a-half epic project!

I started with online research. I interviewed every koi pond owner who wanted to talk about it, and like bee keeping, koi pond owners are a cult unto themselves. They share techniques on water flow, algae control and plant choices. Everyone has an opinion and they are informed by experience. I gained knowledge by watching hours and hours of professional koi pond builders.

May 10th, 2018 I was on the brink of breaking ground. I decided to document each step of building my pond and here is the first entry:

Planning the koi pond on paper

 

I think by sketching. That’s just how my works after drawing my whole life.

 

 

I draw step by step illustrations to make the physics work in my mind. Here is a sketch I doodled in charcoal showing how the tile steps down to an inner shelf, covered in black plastic liner then covered in rocks:

There is a retaining wall in the backyard and the plan was to have the waterfall flow over the wall, but the wall was too high. I decided to rent a jackhammer and bust down part of the wall. I had to do this first because I didn’t want to blast cement everywhere after the pond was built. Of course, I later scrapped this waterfall design and wouldn’t need to tear down the wall.

This is a clip of an air-hammer:

Breaking the Wall. Jackhammer rental.

I found that it didn’t work very well so I rented a 75 pound jackhammer to actually tear the wall apart.

My friend Beau and I did a lot of cement work, blocking in walls, building a stone staircase, and laying the cinderblock edge of the pond.

Here is the first attempt at the waterfall. I had two pre-formed pools that would spill into each other before dropping down into the main pond.
I lined some of the pond with cinderblock and used old cement scraps to build up an island. I ended up ripping most of this out.

I contracted a plumber to put in a water line so the pond could auto-fill if the level got too low. This keeps the pump from drying and burning out if we’re on vacation and the heat evaporates a ton of water. I used the ditch the plumber dug to also run an overflow drain from where the pump would be down to my rain gutter line that moves the water off my property and down to the street gutter.

I tried to dig out the pond by shovel and the ground was full of rocks and clay. After a week of digging I barely got a foot deep and I was aiming to go at least three feet deep. I realized my hand digging efforts weren’t going to work.

The Ground Is too Hard!

So I rented a back hoe. Now, I’ve never built a koi pond and am not super handy with tools. Not naturally, anyway. So over the years I’ve done so many do-it-yourself projects that I’ve grown more confident. But renting a back hoe topped all of my equipment rentals! This is the smallest back hoe I could find.

Once I got the hang of digging with a big machine, it came pretty easy. I scooped out a month’s worth of digging in about three hours.

Running the Back Hoe!

I wasn’t the only one who was terrified…

Back Hoe BUNNY!

As I scooped out the soil and clay I exposed an old, broken sprinkler system that hadn’t worked in five years.

The hole was dug, and I cleaned up the edges making sure there was an outer ledge for tile and and inner ledge where I would pile up rocks to help carry the weight of the edging stone where people could stand.

I ordered the liner from a local plumbing and drain shop. The guy who worked the counter was helpful as he was known locally as “the pond guy.” He became my Ben Kenobi. I got my kids to help roll the 1,000 pounds of plastic over the empty hole. We added a little water to the bottom so the weight of the liquid naturally pushes the liner out to where it needs to be. The edges are secured by dropping a few rocks along the waterline at each stage which helps remove wrinkles.

By the first evening the kids decided I shouldn’t build a koi pond… they wanted a swimming pool! We checked the liner for  any sharp stones coming up from underneath. I started trimming the edges of the liner just so it was easier to manage. I also redesigned the waterfall by pulling the prefabricated tubs out and stacking a cascade of giant slab rock.

The edges were made up of huge slabs of field stone that overlap the liner and are cemented to pre-existing tile. I got the waterfall flowing after installing the pump where I learned a little bit about plumbing. This was the first time I did a lot of PVC cutting and gluing. There were leaks, I’d have to rip it out and do it all over again. The waterfall leaked so I put on more cement, it would crack again and leak again. I covered it in a poly-sealer and it would still leak. I finally ripped it all out and laid black liner over the waterfall and covered that with rock. Then it finally stopped leaking.

I got so excited with the progress of the pond and the pump working that I bought some junker goldfish and some plants to experiment with what would best survive.

Once the pond was done, I could hardly believe it. I cleaned up my tools and repaired the yard. There is still a lot more gardening work to do around the pond, but that’s for another day.

Clip of the finished pond

Oh, and what about the amphibian sanctuary? A bunch of tree frogs have already moved in. They sing every night and have laid hundreds of eggs in the pond… most of which are eaten by my fish!I caught a pic of this female croaking one night:

If you ever want to build a koi pond I say “go for it!” But I would also recommend starting on a much smaller pond, because you really can make a 4 foot pond look amazing. But I’m happy with mine and look forward to spend my time buffing it out instead of hauling rocks and driving back hoes.

Building a koi pond is not an exercise in landscaping, it’s just another art medium. I considered aesthetics, composition, flow of line, appeal, contrast and a host of other design elements but instead of using paint, I’m using natural rock, cement, plumbing and fish. It’s like grabbing little gobs of nature and sculpting with life. It’s not nature, it’s my tribute to nature. In the end that’s what I do in comics, animation and painting… not actual nature but my tribute to life and to God who made it. As Tolkien said we are sub creators.

Koi Pond Update with plants!

One of the most difficult environments to create is one where amphibians reproduce. A universal sign of environmental flourishing is the presence of amphibians, because you have to get both land and water right for them to reproduce. Last night I found a clutch of tree frog eggs in my water plants and I had a sense of satisfaction:

Proof of Life

As I explore other forms of art, everything I learned from other mediums comes into play. Most of my formal design rules came from a single Introduction to Design class I took in college in 1984. As I read the Illusion of Life I saw how many of those principles were operating in Disney animation. I continue to remain the forever student and in offering these teaching videos, I’m only giving back what others gave to me.

Here is a smattering of links about me if you want more information:

For an overview of my career click here.

I don’t make koi ponds for a living, I make comics! You should check them out.
Check out my 16 graphic novels at Amazon

While this is my more personal website, you might want to read more about my usual art here:
More of my articles on my professional website.

Advertisement

Solo Doesn’t Stink… We Stink!

We are being ruined by getting what he want all of the time. That’s my theory and I have good reason for it. It’s not entirely bad news in that it shows that America is one of the most prosperous civilizations to ever exist. you want five billion different combinations of pizza? Go to the Pizza Hut website and make any combination of pizza you want from no pineapple to all pineapple. What you want you get at the click of a button.

This is at least part of what is making us into more and more individualized people at the cost of giving up our collective unity. If you need a lesbian movie channel, there’s one just for you on Netflix. My cable company just advertised for a Scientology channel. We watch volleyball on the BYU Mormon channel. I can turn on my device and the screen will deliver anything I want. What’s odd is that though Netflix offers me hundreds of movies, I still end up just watching Youtube videos. Our Google searches become more and more narrow, “How do I make a small koi pond?” was a recent search of mine. I got fifty how to videos delivered to my laptop. I gained years of experience from experts who make koi ponds and now I’m making a koi pond… though I’ve only put small aquariums together before.

Enter the SOLO movie. You don’t come to watch something the rest of the world loves, you come to bring your heightened, specialized, narrow tastes to watch a movie that you hope is catered to you. My Star Wars tastes have grown narrower after the prequels, because I don’t count them as Star Wars films. I count Force Awakens because I liked it, but I don’t count Last Jedi because I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the Aliens movies after Aliens 2, so they’re not canon. I liked all of the Marvel movies, so they’re all in.

Every franchise offering now begs us to weigh in since the internet has given all of us a voice. We comment on Trump vs. Hillary, quickly label who is in and out of our tribe and largely dismiss those who disagree with our tastes. And don’t get me started on the epic battle that is Thundercats Roar !

I heard so much negative about Solo that I almost didn’t want to see it. But I’m a huge Star Wars fan, making me an automatic Han Solo fan. I was hanging on the edge of my seat during the whole movie that was largely in an empty theater. This is a story, I’m convinced, would have captured a much bigger audience even a few years ago. I left thinking that movies aren’t what’s changing… we are. If everything isn’t perfect in something we watch, we’re encouraged to blow it up, because we want our way. We’re used to getting our way because we order our perfect little universe by blocking what we don’t like on our phones and even Facebook points adds and friends toward us if they agree with our tastes, probably because that’s what silicon valley thinks is how you’re supposed to socialize.

I would recommend Solo to any Star Wars fan, but these days I can’t be so bold. I don’t know your specific tastes you’ve been developing and I don’t know how flexible you are when things don’t go your way. One thing I fear about all of us having such specified tastes is that either what unites us will be so small that movies will no longer be profitable for the largest audience, or we will get lots of tiny, cheap movies which is pretty much what has happened to cable. If we want movies with budgets about the size of Iron Chef, then let’s keep doing this, because that’s where we’re heading.

For my entertainment credits, check out my IMDB page.

Recent Watercolors for my Kickstarter

When fans can request anything for me to paint, almost anything can happen. In this case, anything did happen! Below are five watercolor commissions I got to paint for my recent Kickstarter campaign that I just wrapped up.

For this twenty-sided dice I had to be careful to nail the perspective on the object, or it wouldn’t look authentic:

One of my stranger commission requests, a 20 sided dice.

Next, I got a request to do a Pokemon, and I know a lot of Pokemon, but this one was beyond any of the hundreds I’ve seen. To render Nosepass I kept thinking of the volume for those Easter Island statues:

Perhaps the most obscure of Pokemon. I had to look up “Nosepass”.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of G. K. Chesterton’s body of writing. His work covers most of the early part of last century and he is the master of so many forms of writing it’s hard to pin him down. He wrote plays, books, over 10,000 articles and his work is still relevant today. Could you write 10,000 articles and have them still be relevant in one hundred years? I’ve read my old blog posts and most of my thoughts only lasted a few years before they stank like cheese– cheese being another topic that Chesterton covered.

Perhaps my favorite writer of all time is G.K. Chesterton.

If animation was a Star Trek movie, mine would be the Wrath of Kahl. I’m Kirk, he’s Kahl and my famous quote would be screaming, “KAAAAAHHHHLLLL!” He seemed like a hard guy to work for, but undoubtedly the best Disney animator, making him the best animator, period. I added sharp teeth to better bite your head off.

The Intimidating Milt Kahl.

Earthworm Jim’s laser blaster was designed by my pal, the great Mike Dietz. It’s a fantastic design that goes back to googie shapes from 1950s science fiction. It’s fun to draw and paint:

Earthworm Jim’s blaster.

For more on this campaign, check out the completed Kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tennapel/make-100-doug-tennapel-original-watercolor-inks

 

5 Books That Changed Me

1. The Bible by God
   What if the creator of the universe had something to say to His creation and put it down in a book for us all to read? That would be some book. It would have to cover creation, explain man’s great problem with our nature, offer a solution via salvation and speak of the big ending where the universe is brought to a point of ultimate peace. The only book that can make that claim is The Bible. The more I read the Bible, the more I’m convinced of its high stature among all books. To read it is to witness an epic collection of wisdom that must have come from beyond the human hands that rendered it. No other book has changed western civilization like the Bible. I’ve read broadly on its defenders and its critics and it is the standard by which we argue theology today, as it would if it were divinely inspired. How controversial would an exhaustive book about the existence of unicorns be? Not very. But bring up the Bible and discussions erupt, rightly so.
2. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
   I read this book after becoming a fan of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien and their arguments point back to this earlier source. Chesterton was simply the most influential Christian writer of the last century and nearly all of his 10,000 articles are more relevant today than the day he wrote them. That’s a sign of wisdom, when a thinker can transcend his times to reflect on what is eternally true. Chesterton has a wit that has garnered a generation of fans from Orson Welles to Ian Flemming. To read him is to be both charmed and blown away as Chesterton makes sure you are lost right up until the final sentence of the chapter where everything clicks into place. His primary goal is to re-ignite wonder in a world that is bored with the miraculous.
3. Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl
   Why did some survivors of the Holocaust choose to die while others chose to live? What can one do with one’s own suffering? These two questions are pondered by Frankl who survived the Holocaust. He faced starvation, betrayal and visited his fellow suffering inmates as each person made choices under the greatest stress a man can endure. His unique take on the ordeal flushes out Nazi guards who acted with compassion and fellow Jewish inmates who betrayed their fellow prisoners. His most important message is that while we can’t control when our freedom is stolen by others, they cannot dictate our response.
4. Planet Narnia by Dr. Michael Ward
   As an author, I’ve read most of C.S. Lewis’ works, but one lone man might just have solved the greatest mystery of modern western lit. Dr. Ward proposes that The Chronicles of Narnia was not a simple, formulaic allegory of the gospel story but a complex, medieval structure that pays tribute to the cosmos. He unpacks most of C.S. Lewis’ writings to reveal an author who gave a million mile view of life by using Jupiter, the moon, Mercury, the sun etc. to tell his simple children’s fable. Ward posits that if Narnia was a true allegory, then why would Father Christmas show up as winter turns to spring? There would be no “Christmas” in Narnia, as Christ is depicted as the lion known as Aslan. They would have Aslanmas, but not Christmas in Narnia. But if The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was using Jupiter as a template, then Father Christmas would be the perfect carrier of a jovial spirit, Jove being of the words used in medieval literature to describe Jupiter. This book changed me as a story-teller because I was made aware of building a universe using atmosphere, not allegory.
5. The Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas
   Okay, it was between this or Moby Dick, but I assume most people already know about Melville’s masterpiece while few have tried cracking the Summa. Aquinas was a logician who became a man of faith and wondered if the two disciplines could be harmonized. Was the Bible also rational? He set out to write an exhaustive tome that covers a broad list of topics from animals to the beginning of the universe and asks questions, offers his answers then challenges his own arguments. The book is the toughest slog you’ll ever endure but it is a meticulous search for truth, and that is always to be admired.
   Go to my Goodreads Page

Inktoberfest the 14th – Willie Sings!

Pentel brush pen on copy paper.

Inktober 8th, Amphibiman

Pentel brush pen on photocopy paper.

TenNapel Ink-toberfest

I recently got Jake Parker’s fine new book of drawings from his Kickstarter campaign and now I’m inspired to do some organic looking ships. Welcome to day 1 of Inktober. This was drawn using a Pentel brush pen on photocopy paper.

Armikrog: First Playable Level

Though much of the game has been loosely designed the team needs something concrete and productive to work on. We need a goal to strive for that represents real progress on the game, so a good start is the first playable level.

A first playable level doesn’t have to be pretty, but it has to be functional. The main character Tommynaut should be able to walk on a floor, push a button and collect an item. The Unity engine will be up and working as we apply temp sound effects and make sure music plays, character animation can load, and the camera presents the best point of view for the player to experience the game.

While my designs are still images, it’s the magicians Mike and Ed at Pencil Test Studios who do the animation. The first playable level might have some puppet animate visible, but most of it is “pencil test” animation, which consists of roughly drawn, loose animation sequences that aren’t even cleaned up. The drawings still represent correct proportions and snappy timing, so they act as a playable proof of concept before we pull the trigger and devote expensive resources to final puppet animation.

We’ve got about a month to make the first playable level, but if it succeeds we’ll have a huge, reliable and definitive tool kit to make about 75% of the game! While Mike and Ed are working on this first playable level, I’m working on a super-tight design for the first 1/2 of the game. So if the first playable works out, we’ll be ready to go into production on the first half of the game, and the work being done will be very close to finish when it gets dropped into the working engine.

Doug TenNapel – Day 2 of Armikrog Game Design

I’m amazed at the similarities between all of the art mediums I’ve experienced. Much like siblings, the early process for designing a game is near identical to making a TV show, movie or sculpture. Everything is planned on paper, and it has to start loose so that nothing feels like cement yet.

There’s nothing worse than going rock solid with an idea too early on because once I see something that looks permanent it’s hard for me to think of it any other way. A variety of solutions need to be explored before the best one is chosen. The problem with a bad game idea and a good game idea is that they look similar in the earliest stages.

But the reciprocal is also a problem in that if nothing is ever firmed up then the entire idea remains a ball of much for too long. Indecision is at least as destructive of a problem as is impulse.

A Diverse Team of 18,000 People

Though I had a variety of gaming press and bloggers trying to stop the creation of this game, I got generous help from over 18,000 amazing people… and no, you can’t put them in a box.

This isn’t a Christians vs. Homosexuals victory because many of the people who boycotted let me know that they were Christians. My work has never had a lot of support from evangelicals, and the PC Pharisees regularly line up to make sure I know how un-Christ like I am. We probably agree on that conclusion, though attribute it to different reasons.

Ah, but the other reason why this wasn’t a Christians vs. Homosexuals victory is because many of our donors are outspoken LGBTs and a majority of them are for same sex marriage. Liberals everywhere wish the lovers of my work would just go back in the closet. Out of 18,000 donors we are going to have every world view imaginable. Every one of them is a legitimate member of the team, even the donors who dislike me. That’s not unique to Armikrog, that’s a normal part of life.

I learned early on to not give in peer pressure.  Get in line with every other force in my life that says I can’t create art, I can’t make, I can’t write, I can’t do a game…. You’re just this week’s excuse and it’s not gonna work.

I’d like to dedicate today’s work designing Armikrog to the following gamers: