Alexa: [00:00:00] Do those usual vocal anatomy books just drain the color from your life and make you hit a gray wall. Yes, me too. Don't worry. Eimear McCarthy Luddy from Vocology Ireland has got our backs with her hashtag AnatoMonday, vocal anatomy coloring book. In this episode, Eimear tells us how she got to grips with vocal anatomy and she shares tips on how we can do the same.
She gives us a little insight into her coloring book to see what we might expect, and she talks us through the process from kickstarter to publication. So let's welcome Eimear McCarthy Luddy.
Eimear, whenever you get together with your family or your friends, what's it like when games like Pictionary get pulled out from the cupboard? Do people just rush to have you on their team? Do you start to get stressed? What happens?
Eimear: Sorry, I'm fully cackling because all I can think about is somebody that knows me is gonna watch this, listen to this podcast to be like, absolutely not.
I am the last pick. [00:01:00] I would always be the last pick if it involves drawing anything, which is rather bizarre news when people are like, Eimear, you've created a colouring book. What do you mean you can't draw? I swear, because I draw everything digitally. Um, digital drawing, it has really changed my life. But if you asked me to put pen to paper and I was trying to draw you a larynx, let me tell you, she'd be wonky.
She might not look like a larynx at all. But I'm also a good crack on a quiz team, so that's something I get away with being really bad at drawing then.
Alexa: Oh, well that's okay then we'll just have to have you on the pub quizzes. But I mean, I can't draw a stick person, but I do kind of feel if you are shit at drawing, Pictionary is the game for you.
It's not fun if you are really good.
Eimear: Well, I'm definitely not really good at it. Um, it is a running joke now with friends of mine. They're like, I can't believe that you created this book. I mean. Who knew that you were able to draw? I'm like, I didn't, I, and literally, I was doing it for learning reasons and not for aesthetic reasons [00:02:00] initially, and then I just, it just kind of got out of control and now it's this.
Alexa: Wow. So you didn't do art or anything at school? No.
Eimear: Absolutely not..
Alexa: I really love that story. Well, we're gonna get more into the book and how it was created a little bit later, but I have to ask you, when you first started your teaching journey, what was it that challenged you when it came to vocal anatomy, and why do you think that this is something that you've kind of focused on? You've done your anatomy hashtag on Instagram?
Eimear: Probably the reason that I ended up going down this road is earlier on in my teaching years and my learning years as a singer, they didn't really talk about anatomy at all. And I know this isn't everyone's experience now and, and it's really changed over the last, you know, five to 20 years, depending on which country you're from. But here, no one showed me, you know, a picture of a [00:03:00] larynx. And I always had a lot of questions, which makes you an interesting and often challenging student, I imagine. It's my favorite type of student is the ones that has end endless questions. But I would ask and they wouldn't always have the answer.
And I would go searching. And in the process of searching, I would come across traditional anatomy resources, which let's just say are really boring. You know, if we're being honest about it, you pick up a super sciencey, super heavy textbook about anatomy and I fall asleep reading it because it's really boring and inaccessible.
Um, so yeah, I just didn't really understand it. So anything, I mean, when you're saying, which is the thing that challenged you, all of it, 'cause I was just so curious. I was so eager to know how the engine works and not just drive the car. Like I wanted to know what happens in there. And I kept asking the questions and then no matter how hard I tried to understand it, I just couldn't.
And then you'd get like visual [00:04:00] imagery explanations from teachers and I started taking anatomy courses and seeking help that way instead. And that made more sense because there was a human behind it explaining it. But it only really started to make sense when it was a human who was also a singer, because they're so creative and fun, and they're used to describing things from multiple viewpoints.
And when you don't initially get something, I think one of the best things about singing teachers is they're used to somebody not immediately clicking with an idea. So their response isn't, but why don't you understand it? The response is: okay, let's play and go at it a different way. How about this? And once I realised you can apply that method of teaching, singing to something like anatomy, you can also make it more fun.
Alexa: When it comes to your actual teaching, then how have you found that anatomy has played a role?
Do you talk about the different landmarks or is it there for you to diagnose and understand what's happening in the [00:05:00] person in front of you?
Eimear: I think it really varies from student to student. So some people just prefer not really talking about it and not knowing a lot behind the why of you know how things work.
And I like to go based on what's gonna work best for the person who's in front of me. So if I have someone who wants to epically nerd out about anatomy, I will do that. But if I have someone who doesn't, I'll get there a different way. So I might initially present them with the idea of why. So when we're doing a particular exercise, I might give them the, this is why, because this is what we're looking to achieve.
Cool. And then we move on. And someone else might say, why, but tell me more about this and let's talk about this. Be like, okay, cool. But at the end of the day, singing is a motor skill, and we know the more that we play and sing and explore in a lesson, the better we're gonna learn rather than if we just talk.
So I think the honest answer would be: at the beginning of my teaching. So when I first started learning about all this stuff, and any voice coach who's, who's listening to this has probably done this at some point, [00:06:00] where you do a course and then you come back from the course and you're so excited 'cause you just learn this cool new thing.
And then like, let's say you do a course on like the tongue and how the tongue works. And then you come back and every single student that whole week gets lessons on tongue, you know, mobility and let's try this. And it's just like the best thing that ever happened. But really it's because you just did the course.
I think that was me with anatomy that, like when I first started delving into it, it was all I thought about all the time, and then I realised actually it's not. That interesting to everyone, and it's not that necessary to be talking about it as much as you were. So I reflected and learned and gave myself an output, so I, or an outlet for that kind of thought.
And that's how the Instagram hashtag kind of started was I thought, oh, I'll do this sort of once a week to deepen my own knowledge and not to bore my students with it and instead bore Instagram with it, which turned out to be a really good idea. So that's how that started.
Alexa: You're totally right about, you know, clinging on to things that you are learning at [00:07:00] that particular moment.
I think Chris Johnson spoke about it in one of his courses about going through fads and how everything you hear is a register issue and then how everything you hear after that is to do with the tongue 'cause you've read this book about the tongue, where you've watched something with Kerrie Obert about the tongue and it's Yeah.
Oh yes. What are we actually referring to when we talk about anatomy?
Eimear: That one really makes me stop and think because what are we referring to? 'cause technically there's anatomy and physiology and there's like the whole, it's a quite a black hole to dive into there in that answer. I guess with me when I talk so, so passionately and weirdly about this particular subject. It's, you know, the body and how it works and what's in there, and what their usual jobs are, and what their other more fun jobs are, and how one thing affects another thing. It's kind of everything. Everything at the same time, which is a bit overwhelming.
That will be my basic, my basic answer. I guess my [00:08:00] more complicated answer is, 'cause I think even that, even the name or even the word anatomy is a bit boring. I'm gonna keep end up saying this. So because my brain is a bit neuro spicy in the way that it works, I like to find unusual connections between things in order to keep life interesting.
Um, so when I'm presented with something that is linear and sort of goes from point A to point B and is black and white and stuffy, I find ways to make it colourful so that it's easier to remember and to understand. And I think anatomy as a subject can appear a little bit black and white. But when I look at it, I see magic.
Like I think singers when they, you know when you have someone and they're trying to make a new sound that they haven't made before and you're sort of queuing them through it, guiding them through it, playing, exploring, and then they make this amazing sound and they have this moment and they go, my goodness. Like how do I do that? What was that? And it's just so, there's such a [00:09:00] moment of splendor and joy and wonder, and that's how I feel about anatomy. I think it's fascinating, but what's happening in there, how it's working. And even when we think we know, we still don't know. So anatomy is sort of magical for me.
It's like discerning the science from the magic.
Alexa: So for teachers out there who are struggling to get a hold of anatomy, they don't really know where to start, what would be your advice other than get Eimear's coloring book?
Eimear: Oh goodness. I think for me, starting small and accepting that you're not gonna know all of the things straight away was helpful. I also remember someone saying to me that it does take a number of passes around the track before you can actually start holding onto the information. So I think whenever I looked up something, if I looked up something online, I would be faced with one of those pages and they would say, you know, [00:10:00] origins and insertions and the long muscle names and everything was so intimidating.
That it only started making sense to me once I picked one thing. Like, okay, I'm gonna do that. So there was one week where I spent the whole week just picking anatomical terminology. Which is something I haven't included in, in the book yet. 'cause I couldn't figure out a way yet to make that fun. But bear with, 'cause I have ideas, things like what does, you know, anterior and posterior mean? And can you come up with a fun way of remembering that, you know, if posterior means to the back, you know, oh, there's my posterior, or what else is on your back way? You know how, think of a silly way of remembering something and do it that way. And then building blocks of like step by step.
I think with singers and singing teachers start really small. So start with some things that can be really helpful for your students immediately. Like, you know, knowing that the first job of your larynx wasn't , making sounds, knowing that the main reason that [00:11:00] we have a larynx is to keep us alive so that we don't drown, you know, because you have two tubes. You've got your windpipe, and then you've got your esophagus and your larynx is like the junction point between those two that diverts liquids away because otherwise you would drown. So it's super useful for things like that, and I think as a singer, understanding that your larynx is used to swallowing so often, so many times throughout the day, so it's got that particular motivation down. It knows how to do that. It knows how to lift and squeeze, and when we're singing, we're doing something different. So it's bringing awareness to hang, that thing that you're used to doing. Right now we're gonna play and do something else. But if it tries to do that other thing, if it gets confused while we're singing and it tries to like lift and squeeze and put in a lot of effort or pressure or something, let's not demonize that response. Let's say Harry, it's just used to doing something else a lot of the time because anatomy, because isn't that cool? Let's come back into the room and keep playing again. You know, shake it off and let's have another go, and then make it fun and make it [00:12:00] silly. And it's just a fun way of bringing in small bits of anatomy without overwhelming someone with a huge thing.
So yeah, start small. Forgive yourself for not knowing everything straight away, because it's really hard to know all the answers, and I think finding out a few is a great. First step and then keep going. And even the people who are like really good at this stuff still get it wrong. Like it's, there's a lot of names to memorize and it's not gonna make you a better singing teacher to like, know really long names of muscles and stuff.
It's gonna make you sound like you read a lot of books, but it's not gonna make you sing better. So forgive yourself. Start learning. It's fun.
Alexa: There's one thing to know names like vocal folds and geniohyoid and sternocleidomastoids, and it's, it is sort of another in my brain to think of directions or, or positions like inferior or lateral or medial.
Is [00:13:00] there a hierarchy in terms of what is more important than another to learn as a singing teacher? Do you think in this topic,
Eimear: in terms of terminology or function you think?
Alexa: I think more in terms of terminology.
Eimear: Hmm. One of the things, this is gonna sound a bit silly 'cause it's a silly rhyme I came up with for myself. Um, one of the things that was helpful for me to learn particularly about muscles is that being able to dissect the different parts of the muscle can often tell you what direction it's gonna move and therefore what function it has. And that isn't always true when it gets into the like, intrinsic muscles of the larynx, they have very long names and even knowing what direction they're gonna move is still kind of only step one. But with some of the other muscles, it helps. Like if you're looking up, um, not sternothyroid Yeah. sternothyroid. Yes. As I think through this in my [00:14:00] head, see, even me, I'm still thinking through this stuff.
So something is often named for, this isn't true for every muscle, but let's just say generally this is a, a little easy hack that we like to use. Please that it will be named for its origin and its insertion. So if it's a Sterno Thyroid, Sterno, the sternum, thyroid the thyroid cartilage, Sterno being the origin, thyroid being the insertion. So if that's our little hack, it's named from Origin to Insertion. Hack number one. Hack number two. The general rule is that our insertion point moves towards the origin point in muscles, and my way of remembering that is that I will often move towards a plate of Oreos. Yes, I love of that. It works for me.
I had someone later on saying, oh, Eimear. But you could have just remembered them because it's alphabetical. Because I comes before O and it's like that. That is a very, this is the perfect, perfect example of how my brain is neurospicy and a little wacky. 'cause it comes up [00:15:00] with, I move towards Oreos and that's, I'm always gonna remember that, whereas I'm probably not gonna remember that's something alphabetical like that makes perfect sense to me, but it's not gonna stick.
But every time I'm looking at an anatomy book, all I think of is this plate of Oreos. And I think, yes, I move towards them. So sterno thyroid origin insertion. If I move towards Oreos, that means the thyroid is gonna move towards the sternum when that muscle is engaged. So that's the secret hack of like how I often try and figure out what function muscles are gonna have, is actually sitting down and looking at what's in the name, what the different bits mean, and then guessing what the movement might be, and that's been the kind of fastest way that I started adding building blocks together. Um, so yeah, and I think then when you add things like lateral, medial, those kind of things, that's just sort of, um, tells you where something is on the map. You know, like if you've got, for singers, we will often hear about the pterygoid muscles, right?
That the ones in, um, in the [00:16:00] jaw, there's lots of different muscles involved in mastication and chewing, those kind of things. And two of the muscles that we talk about, especially if you've ever been for a vocal mustache massage, um, they'll talk about the lateral and the medial pterygoids. So what that's telling you essentially is that one of them is lateral.
Lateral usually means more towards the edges, and medial means more towards the midline. So all it's telling you is when you're looking at that diagram and someone points and goes, those are two pterygoids, which one is gonna be the medial one, the one closer to the midline. So like...
someone, someone explained this to me before, um, very sciencey human was like, yeah, we just, we like to have words for everything because it means you don't have to remember everything 'cause it gives you all of the details right there. It's a clear recipe and we're very lazy and we need our recipe and I thought: that's an interesting way of putting it. Okay. So they sound intimidating as words, but they're actually not when you break them down. So yeah, get your plate of Oreos and you'll be grand.
Alexa: And I have to ask, is it always Oreos for you? Is that your top biscuit? [00:17:00]
Eimear: No. It's weird. It's just that that was the first thing that popped into my head when I was trying to come up with a funny way of remembering this for my brain.
I'm like, I could have used, I could have thought, um, oranges. I love oranges. Orange juice. That would've been great. I thought about all these things afterwards, but it was too late because I had already thought of this image of me just like munchin on some Oreos, and then now it wouldn't be my go-to biscuit.
I love a chocolate hob knob. Dipped in a nice cup of tea.
Alexa: Oh, you see, I'm not a dipper.
No.
Eimear: Not even with a hob knob.
Alexa: Not with anything.
Eimear: Oh, without the dip though. And, and it's also, how long do you dip it for? See, there's a science. There's a science to that. 'cause if you dip for too long and it's mush, it's gonna ruin your day.
Alexa: And the tea, which is the main focus of the snack, to be fair. So nothing gets dunked in that. It's, it's too precious. Also, when I think of the pterygoids, I think of pterodactyls. Yes. Um, so we can think about the pterodactyls, which one is where in position.
Eimear: [00:18:00] Totally agree. Honestly, if the only takeaway that anyone gets from today's episode is, oh, if you just come up with weird ways of remembering things, is that, is that what I've been doing this whole time?
Yeah, it works. You know, make it relate. Have a more fun with it. Make it relatable. Make it fun because everything is, if you, you know, look at it the right way or try hard enough, there's always some kind of magic or joy or unusual way to see something that makes it better.
Alexa: So what is your favourite piece of vocal anatomy that you have studied and to have drawn digitally?
Eimear: So I probably don't have the same answer to those two bits. So I think my favorite piece of vocal anatomy. It's probably the arytenoids, which I know everyone says that word differently. So some people say arytenoids and then some people say arytenoids. Uh, I learned all of my anatomical words from books before I went to a lecture, so I was just reading them out in my head and that's what they sounded, like, and then I met people and they said them [00:19:00] differently, and I thought, oh, are we supposed to say arytenoids because I don't.
Anyway, I think they are so fascinating because the ln itself is so fascinating as. Just all the different parts of it, all the muscles that are inside of it and outside of it facilitating its movement, intrinsically, extrinsically, like it's just nuts. But the arytenoids, they're just fricking superheroes. The way that they move is fascinating.
So that's why the second part of your question is not the same, because drawing the arytenoids has been a bit of a nemesis for me. Uh, they're quite difficult to to draw. So I'm still working on, it's still working on that because they make an awful lot more sense in 3D than in 2D just as parts of anatomy.
So like I've tried, um, you know, free 3D printed files of larynx and stuff that I've done and printed out my own ones to kind of see them instead of buying those very expensive anatomical models. I actually have a friend of mine who [00:20:00] is the person who did additional illustrations in my book, Rosa Divine is her name. Fabulous human. Um, and she is working on 3D printing all larynx for me at the moment. And I was trying to explain the arytenoids to her, uh, last week. I was like, no, but it's not quite right because you know, it needs to be a little smushier on this bit and a little concave on this bit. And this has a muscle attached to it.
And she's, and she's not a singer or a voice nerd, so whenever we explain. anatomy things we always use really wacky words. Um, like the hyoid bone is kind of Batman and uh, the thyroid is the shield and the cricoid is the signet ring. And like we have different words for it when we brainstorm. 'cause she's not in the vocal world at all. It's wonderful.
Um, but yeah, so drawing them has not been my favourite thing to draw, draw. But they are probably my favourite bit of vocal anatomy because they're so interesting with how they move. I think my favorite thing to draw, um. Is, I really enjoyed drawing the, uh, the side, like the sagittal of the vocal tract, so the [00:21:00] one that's on the cover of the book and have fun drawing that because I think that was the first thing that didn't make sense to me in a voice text book.
I, 'cause I would look at it and I'd be like, I know what that bit is, I know what that bit is, but I do not understand where the larynx is in this, if I'm being fully honest. So like you, you, you'd look at it and you'd be like, I know that the label is pointing to that thing, and it says that's the larynx, but like, how does it make, because it doesn't look larynxy at all because it's chopped in half.
And the minute that that's clicked for me years ago when I first started with this, it's like, oh, that's so much less complicated than I thought it was. Is this actually secretly not that complicated and just no one's talking about it. So that was my, that was my favourite thing to draw. And it's actually me.
So any, so a couple of friends of mine noticed this in the book cover, but like the, if you look my, this has post-its on it, but if, if you look, that's me, it's the same.
Alexa: I can, I can totally tell by your [00:22:00] hyoglossus,
right? Unmistakable,
Eimear: unmistakably, Eimear. Yeah. I hadn't said it to anyone. And then a friend of mine was like, did you?
Draw yourself and put it on the cover of your book. It's like, yeah, and if you make a book, you should do the same thing because it's taken a piece of my soul, so now it has me on the cover. There you go.
Alexa: I love that. This kind of goes onto a question I had about how you discovered mindfulness. Adult colouring therapy blew up years ago. My Mum's got a stack of them at home. Is there any science behind doing a mindful task and being able to learn better about something?
Eimear: Yeah, I think the reason I got into it again, was sort of similar to how we do stuff. How we naturally teach or how we evolved to teach people how to sing is.
We're, we don't usually get somebody to come in and be like, today we are going to strengthen this particular set of muscles and we will do it this way and do [00:23:00] this exercise 10 times and then do exercise 10 times. We don't often do that, and in the singing world, because it is also about communication and expression and making someone's soul feel something while also learning a complex motor skill.
We tend to blend the two and I think all of my earliest exposure to teachings at the first. People I ever taught, um, this is by accident, but the, the, a number of my first students were all neurodivergent in some way. So like, my first student ever was, no, a bit of ADHD, a bit of dyslexia, and then a kind of, all the rest of my first couple of students were also in that camp.
So that was my earliest exposure. And for those students, I found the best results that I would get from them would be by presenting something in a more creative way from multiple angles. So not just giving them one thing and saying, this is what we're doing. We would have multiple directions in and find what works, the path of least resistance, and then go from there.
So with anatomy, I was thinking, is there a way that we can do [00:24:00] that as well? So instead of being like, here's a diagram, uh, memorise the labels, instead of doing that saying, Hey, here's a diagram and it has labels, but let's colour it in. So while you're coloring it in and doing the same color per label because it takes you a while to colour in. You are looking at the page for a long time. You're also moving at the same time, so you're engaging different parts of your brain. You know, how much longer are you looking at that page and enjoying the colouring? How much more likely is it that you're gonna remember the thing that was on the page?
And then maybe 10 pages later, I have another one that says, Hey, this one, but it doesn't have labels. Colour it in again, and then fill in your own labels. And then about 10 pages later, it's, Hey, draw your own one. Put your own labels in, if you like. So it's multiple, it's repetition, but in a fun way and involving something else like colouring.
So it's not immediately overwhelming because you don't just have to look at it and memorise something. So it's basically I'm, I'm stealing the singing teacher's handbook [00:25:00] of doing things and then applying it to anatomy and I just kind of was hoping it would work. So I didn't spend a lot of time sitting down and doing research to be honest on whether or not this was gonna be the most effective way to learn.
It was just, if I'm being honest, a hunch that I had because it's how I wanted to learn and it was how I was teaching myself. And I don't know, sometimes when you teach yourself to do something in particular way and you try it with a bunch of people and see if it works, it might work for like eight outta 10 of them.
You never know. And the mindfulness stuff was, uh. I, I feel the same way about those adult colouring books. You know, the ones that everyone was using, I would often buy them, and to be honest, I would often buy them and then colour one page and then forget I had them, so I would put them down. But often when people recommend mindfulness, I haven't historically been great at mindfulness.
I'm still working on it, but , I'm not great at mindfulness when I sit there and don't do anything. 'cause I get quite fidgety, so I prefer mindfulness that involves [00:26:00] movement. So like if somebody is giving me a mindfulness exercise and I'm walking at the same time, or cycling at the same time, or coloring... I find that easier to get in sync with than just sit there and be still eer is, as you may have noticed by now, not quite in my like personality wheelhouse. I just can't take it. I get antsy. So that was why. And I also know from singers out there how when you're in rehearsal periods where you're in tech week or something and you're just hanging around for hours and it's fun.
The bits where, you know, you get to work with people and when you're on stage and doing the fun bits is great, but the bits in between sometimes it's just like, it's really boring. So you dunno if you have five minutes or if you have two hours before you're needed again. And I thought, oh, wouldn't it be nice if they had something in the same book that was sort of mindful that they could just sit down and be like, I'm gonna colour in some swirly bits, just, you know, as my break in rehearsal and then I'm gonna come back on stage and [00:27:00] it's low stress, but I'm also accidentally learning something while doing that. I dunno, I kinda like that idea.
Alexa: Yeah. And did you have any feedback or any insight from teachers around you to say that this is something that they were, you know, calling for?
Eimear: So people asked me from initially, when I first started doing those weekly posts online, and people did ask, you know, do you sell posters or do you sell, um, your images and, you know, have you made a book or, or whatever.
And it sort of, they kept asking me and I kept not having time to make the things that they were asking for. And I was always thinking in the background i'd love to make. A colouring book because it's something that I would want. And then I noticed over the years, one or two people might ask in some of the forums that they would say, oh, I wonder, you know, has anyone done a colouring book?
And the thing is, people have done anatomy colouring books before, so there are some in existence. Um, some of the really big names in anatomy, they've done colouring books. And I looked at their colouring books [00:28:00] and hated them so much because it was like just a normal anatomy colouring book, except in like gray scale.
And she would just like, oh, and I looked at it and thought, but that's not what I'm imagining when I'm asking for a colouring book. And I thought there's no point in sitting around waiting for someone else to do it. I might as well. So, you know, once the time I had a little bit of time off, I had actually, my friends will laugh at me a lot for this, but I, you know, I think I had maybe a week and a half and I thought, I'm gonna take this week and a half.
I'm not gonna see any students. I'm not gonna do any courses. I'm just gonna sit home and I'm gonna write this whole book in a week because don't I have all of the images already, you know, for the last four years of drawing. Surely it's not gonna be that complicated. And yes, I did take a week and a half off.
No, I did not complete the book in a week and a half. Absolutely not. But, uh, I got my contents page done and well, congrats. It snowballed.
Alexa: You had a a, a Kickstarter funding [00:29:00] process for this, so how, why was that implemented and and how did you go about setting that up?
Eimear: Yeah, so, uh, Rosa, who's the Rosa Divine, who's the person who did the illustrations in the book that aren't the anatomy ones. So like, you know, the way there's, even on, even on the cover, there's like the swirly, sort of swirly bits as well as the anatomy thing. So Rosa is the person that did the, all the swirly bits and all of the mindfulness bits and she puts, she does that stage of book uh, development where if somebody has written a book and finished a book and they send it off to editors and it's been edited and stuff, and then they send it off to somebody to put the book together and make it look.
Like a real book. Uh, Rosa has done that for a number of people before, so I was asking her - she's a close friend of mine, so I asked her for, you know, advice on, listen, I want to do this book. And it's been on my list for years and I just haven't been able to get around to it. And I want to do it now, but I know nothing about that process and like, what about publishers and what about this and what about that? And I had so many questions and she was so very patient [00:30:00] with me and so knowledgeable in an area I knew very little about. And when I, when I threw the idea at her and I said, this is what I wanna do, she said that's, it's gonna be an unusual one to bring into a publisher. They're probably not gonna be super keen to publish something like that because it's quite an expensive idea, to have, like, it's not like I'm, I didn't go for publishing, you know, a black and white, uh, thing, you know, with low quality paper that when you colour it in, it comes through the other side and.
You know, I had this really clear idea. I said, I want people to be able to colour it in. I don't want that to show through the paper. I want it to be, have colour in it, but not be in color so that it's not super boring to look at. So there's still some color on each page. I want to be able to tear out the back page to make paper larynx, like there's, I want to do all these things with it.
Can I make that happen? And she basically said, yes you can, but the only way that you should do this is if you launch it through Kickstarter because it's such a risk if you're putting up loads and loads of money upfront to what if people don't wanna buy it? [00:31:00] So like, I will do this project with you, but let's do it through Kickstarter because that way you don't take on the risk.
And I thought that was a really sensible suggestion and I don't know if people will like it, but I'm gonna do it anyway. So I said it on social media and that's 'cause once you say it, and once it's out there, then there's no going back. And it's quite terrifying because the way Kickstarter works is either you raise the money and you get the money and you can follow through with it, or you don't meet your funding goal and you get no money.
Alexa: Oh, so you don't even get what you actually have been pledged? Ah...
Eimear: absolutely not. So it's quite terrifying because it is publicly, it's putting your head, you know, above the gauntlet and saying, hi, I'm here. I have this idea for a project, and if you believe in me and you believe I actually will deliver the project, I.
And you believe it's a project worth investing in, then commit to give me the money and the amount I really like. It's quite scary to do that and everyone in the industry knows it's, it's freaky to put yourself out there and be like, Hey, do you wanna support me in this thing? [00:32:00] And then people did. Which was so great. And the response was really uh, really good and people from within the community were like, this is definitely a resource that we want. But the page in Kickstarter didn't have a lot of, it, didn't have what the book was gonna look like because we couldn't make the book unless the Kickstarter worked. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.
So I am unendingly grateful that I had enough people within the community from Instagram that have been following the posts for so many years, that they believed that I was gonna make a quality product, that they believed I was trustworthy enough to actually finish the project and send it to them. Uh, and they're the reason that it happened.
So I didn't go the old traditional route of going to a publisher and getting them to agree it was a good idea. Instead, I decided to go directly to the consumers and be like, Hey, is this a thing you want? 'cause I think I can do this in a cool way. Do you believe me? And they were like, yeah, do it.
So I did it and it turned out better than some of them thought, which was really nice. I got a few [00:33:00] message from people being like, I didn't think it was gonna be this nice 'cause 'cause it was a Kickstarter project and it's much higher quality than I thought it was gonna be. I'm like, aha.
Oh, I like that
feedback.
Yeah. Yeah. That's
Alexa: lovely. And such a, such a good story for how being present on social media in certain ways can really pay off in the future for future products and this passive income that you, that you might be getting now as as. But then I, I wanna ask you how you, if you're not going through a publisher, how you kind of produce the book yourself and ship it out?
Yeah.
Eimear: Yeah, so we did with the Kickstarter the point of that was to fund a first print of the book. To fund a first print of the book in the way that we wanted the book to look like. So, you know, in the future if I was to do a reprint or if I, you know, connect to the publisher or anything, I imagine these decisions will have to be made again.
But for now, we did Kickstarter that did, uh, a unlimited. Print run, and I'm still making my way through that print run from the Kickstarter. So we [00:34:00] have that, we have those books printed still the original, the original version, um, of the book that everyone on Kickstarter got. And that's at the moment when people order it from me, it's directly from me and I am making my way through that particular stock.
And then once that's gone, I have to make a decision of what I do next, and I would then be self-funding it if I do a further print. So that's kind of thing, it's kind of slowly making my way through there, have it printed. I ship it directly from here, so I ship across the globe, which has its upsides and downsides because downsides are, you know, when folks who follow me from like Australia or somewhere order a book like the shipping is expensive because I have to go from Ireland all the way to Australia.
But the upside is everyone who has ordered a book from me gets a little handwritten note, which is probably the favourite part of my week, is when people order a book and I get to say, thank you for ordering this from me and not from someone else. Like it really is from me. I'm the person that packages it. I'm the person [00:35:00] that sends it. And that part has been great because I get to see where they're going, you know, and a book goes off to like Canada or like Tasmania or you know, Switzerland, and it's just very like, it's just the best part of my week. That's so great. Future me. I have no idea what's in store.
So there might be publishers, maybe keep an eye, um, for future books and things. Maybe, um, might be doing it a bit differently. But we might do it through Kickstarter again, who knows?
Alexa: Could we maybe have a little sneak peek at the book? Have you got a favourite page that you could share with us or tell us what we can expect? You've told us a little bit about the repetition part of it and the larynx that you can make at the back of the, the page. Oh,
yeah. Fill
out.
Eimear: That's an example of someone that's who has coloured in a page, so it's like, so it looks nicer than the, than it being in black and white. And I think that's my favourite page.
It's actually, we were talking about the last rule on the medial pterygoid stuff earlier on. [00:36:00] I like this because it's so, um, symmetrical. I don't know, there's something like really visually satisfying about it, which I like. Um, but that's the idea of the kind of breakdown, like each page is gonna have images that you can color in worthy bits that you can also colour in, just makes everything look nicer.
And then text and explanation. So I think. Sometimes, I mean, when I originally started and thought I'm making this colouring book, it's like, oh, it's gonna be just a colouring book. And I thought, well, but I want to add some information in there. So I thought maybe I'll just add the information like I usually do in the bottom of my Instagram posts.
Um, and then I went back through them and realised I actually provide quite a lot of information in those captions, uh, more than I thought I was. So, 'cause when I put them in the book, it's got really texty so then I had to edit out some of the text 'cause it was too much information. So I've tried to strike a balance of there is information about how everything works, uh, but there's not so much information that it becomes sciencey and textbooky and borings.
Um, yeah, the [00:37:00] repetition ones are sort of, I can give an idea. I have like. Host, its on this. I dunno if that's really gonna be quite distracting to look at. But um, so if you have like a page that has, let's say larynx things with labels, you will couple of pages later also have one with no labels. So you have to remember them.
And then you've got draw your own one. So like you can't really see the lines, but there are like faded lines of the larynx there for you to draw on. Oh, thank
Alexa: goodness. Yeah. 'cause mine would come out looking like a pelican or something.
Eimear: So would my, so would mine. But I swear, when you're digital drawing things are a lot, um, things make a lot more sense.
And the larynx at the back, it does look a bit wild on the, on the page. 'cause people look at this and they're like, oh, how is that? Oh, I ripped it outta this one. So you can't see it. Oh, okay. Well here it is when it's made. Oh yeah. Great. I like I can show you that.[00:38:00]
So it is paper. So bear in mind when you're working with paper, you know, it is only paper, it's a bit wiggly, but you have your epiglottis can move 'cause it's sort of, um, again, Rosa, who is a paper engineering genius and sat patiently through me explaining how the larynx works has made it so that that can move.
She's also made it, which is still baffling to me because I spent a really long time working on this with her. And I dunno how we managed to make it work. But the arytenoids also move. So like you can open them and close them and those are the vocal folds, you know, made out of folds of paper. And also this hinges so like you can't, it's very hard to see it on camera, but
Alexa: woo.
Oh
Eimear: great. Yeah, we're talking about like crico thyroid tilt or whatever you wanna call it. So it's cool. I really like it. Uh, it took a long time. I think my favorite part about that is probably that when we were trying to make a paper larynx that did these types of movements and something wasn't [00:39:00] working, Rosa would say to me, this isn't like, I can't get it to move that way. Tell me about how it moves in the body. So tell me the bits that I'm missing. And I would talk through the muscles and the membranes that were there, and then she'd go, oh, well it makes perfect sense because if there was something there connecting these two parts, then that would move this way. Oh. From an, from an engineering point of view, that makes a lot more sense.
So like the more accurate that I got explaining how the anatomy worked, the more, the easier it was for her to create that movement in paper, which I just thought was like, really cool.
Alexa: Yeah. Yeah. So cool. Where can we actually get ourselves a copy and how much do we need to save to, to afford ourselves one?
Eimear: So they are only on sale through my website, so there's no way of getting them through any of the big other websites, it's just me, so it's vocology.ie I think the link to, to the specific page on my website will be in the show notes from today. Uh, but it's in my shop on vocology.ie. The book is [00:40:00] 24 99. That's in Euro. So I dunno if some, 'cause you people might be listening from different countries. So I don't know what the exchange rate is at the moment in your country. I'm sorry. But in Euros it's 24.99 and then the shipping varies depending on where you are. So if you're on the island of Ireland it's obviously gonna be cheaper than if you are on, you know, in the UK somewhere or in Europe, or if you're farther afield, you know, in Australia or those places.
It's a little bit more expensive. And have had some people reach out and say that they've gotten together with a few of their pals and they've ordered like five books together or 10 books together so that they could have. Just like divide the shipping and stuff between them. So there's also that. And put yes, save up.
Get one from the original maker of it. Yay.
Alexa: You mentioned earlier that you had some ideas of how you might be able to include like anatomical directions and bits on the mapping in future. So without taking away the celebration of this book in the here and now and talking about [00:41:00] what's next, I'm still gonna ask you what's next.
Um, do you have any plans if this, is this book gonna become a series? Have you got any other parts of the voice that you would wanna tackle in a coloring book?
Eimear: I. I have so many. Um, I, I'm really, I'm so pleasantly surprised with how many people asked me this immediately as I published the first one, but they said, this is so great.
I want more giving more right now. I was like, okay. That's a wonderful response because it tells me that there is an audience out there for this kind of learning and for this way of doing it. So it makes me want to make more books. I think the answer to, is there something that I'd love to. Include Absolutely, because you could only fit so much in, I, I had all these ideas of how much I would include in there, but for example, I didn't have any space to include, um, the muscles of like respiration, um, the exception of the diaphragm, which I did put in.
But other things, like, there's no picture in there of lungs. There's no intercostals, transverse abdominis, there's [00:42:00] no other, uh, muscles to do with respiration there. So I'd love to do them, um, in a follow on book. I would love to do the kind of anatomical terms in a fun way. I haven't quite figured out my way in there yet. There's been a lot of trial and error with this particular thing, but I'll keep going 'cause I know I'll crack it eventually. So my plan is that it would be a series of some sort, I hope, I dunno how many books there is in that series. We shall see. Um, but yes, I don't have a date, I don't have a timeline yet for when that is going to happen.
But yes, I think there are, there are more books in me for this. More coloring books. Definitely more coloring books. Maybe there's another type of book in me in future. I don't know. We'll see.
Alexa: Oh, well it's really a big congratulations on it. It looks beautiful, and as I told you before, it's on my birthday list, so I'm just wanna pass on my, my congrats.
Eimear it's been so fun to chat with you. , Can you tell us again where we can find out more about you?
Eimear: [00:43:00] You can find out about me on my website, vocology.ie or follow me on Instagram because I am there probably more often than I should be. And that's @vocologyireland. Um, pop in, say hello, pop by on Mondays where I try to put up my Adam Monday posts, although for the madness of this book that has slowed down recently, 'cause I'm trying to fit everything into my rather saturated schedule, but I would do my best. Sometimes I do silly little quizzes in my stories, which are quite fun. They're not meant to be taken very seriously. Sometimes I get very panicked DMs from vocal coaches being like, I tapped too quickly through your quiz. And I said the wrong answer, but I know the right answer.
Alexa: Oh, bless. Bless us, us. Oh, it's, we bless us. Always trying to prove that we or should be what we are.
Eimear: I know. I know. So pop by, you know, follow, do the quizzes. They're good, fun. Say hello. Send me a message if you've got one of my books, and tell me if you're enjoying it and if there's something missing from it that you'd love to be in the next book.[00:44:00]
Lemme know.
Alexa: And what sort of, what program do you use to do the digital drawing?
Eimear: Ah, I was using, not gonna lie about four years ago, and I started this, I. I was using free software called, what was it called? MediBang, I think is what it was called. Uh, I have, I have told people this on Instagram before who've reached out to me and asked me how I was doing it so that they could do them themselves.
And without fail, every person that I said this to sent me another DM fact two days later going, I don't know how you're doing this. This is insane. Ah, I can't use this program. Um, I dunno. I just, I had nothing else to do. It was covid. Come on. We all picked up weird hobbies. Mine was this one. So yeah, that's what I used.
And then, Rosa obviously used different software when she was putting it together in the book, but I, I don't understand how to use that, so I can't really talk about it, but,
Alexa: well, can I float an idea out for you, Eimear? Yes. To actually change the way you have family games is a digital [00:45:00] version of Pictionary.
Eimear: Oh goodness. Oh, interesting. Oh, that would be fun. That'd be definitely very different. Although I will say it does take me a very long time. Still.
Alexa: It would be like an hour on the timer. Yeah, but that's okay. Everyone can just have a sherry or two in between. Oh, Eimear, it's been a real pleasure to chat with you.
Thanks so much and good luck with the book. I'll absolutely give you a DM and a mention when I get mine because I'm, you know manifesting it. Thank you so much Eimear.
Eimear: You are so welcome.