Courtesy of Solenne Jackson

Over the last two years, Solenne Jackson ’25 embarked on a project: designing and marketing her own Lego set.

Solenne Jackson ’25 took on the challenge while in lockdown during the pandemic, designing her own Lilo and Stitch Lego set and posting it on ideas.lego.com, a site where people can submit designs for new lego sets for Lego to consider. The set now has over 8,300 supporters, close to the 10,000 supporters needed for Lego to consider making it an official set.

The idea of making her own Lego set had bounced around in Jackson’s mind for a while. 

 “I’ve been playing with Legos my whole life, and I was in the Lego store and saw one of the first lego idea sets, a Minecraft Lego set,” Jackson said. She said she always wanted to make a Lilo and Stitch Lego set but never had the time. 

But when the pandemic came around and everyone was stuck at home, Jackson finally had the time and the opportunity. 

”During lockdown, my mom and I read an article that said Lilo and Stitch was coming out with a live action version of the film and that it was being postponed because of the pandemic,” Jackson said. “And we realized that this is a great opportunity if I could design a Lego set now such that it would be released around the same time as this resurgence of the Lilo and Stitch franchise.” 

With newfound time and inspiration, Jackson taught herself how to use online Lego building platforms. Her set was constructed on a platform called Mecabricks, which she found the easiest to use. After a while, set-building became “a bit of an obsession.” What started as a hobby soon evolved into a remarkable skill set, prompting Jackson to share her creations on social media platforms, where they garnered praise from fellow Lego enthusiasts. Her passion for Lego building even caught the attention of her colleagues at work, leading to the incorporation of Lego-building activities in corporate away days. The joy and creativity she discovered through Lego have not only enriched her own life but have also become a source of inspiration for others in unexpected and delightful ways.

“I’d be working well into, like, 3:00 a.m building Lego sets, waking up at six to keep going, just plotting these bricks on the computer,” Jackson said.

Jackson started with graph paper, sketching out the basic dimensions of the set and striving to make it as accurate as possible with regards to the movie itself. 

Jackson also noted that the rustic Hawaiian house itself had a lot of three dimensionality fading into nature, which made it more playable, while also showcasing both traditional and modern aspects of Hawaiian culture. 

Jackson also looked online at concept art of the house itself and various scenes from the movie to make the house as accurate as possible. But she still made a few alterations in places where the movies are unclear. 

“The kitchen tiles by themselves took an hour to place, and there is also this kind of basement portion where Jumba and Pleakley, the two aliens [in the movie] live where there’s not really any clear description of where they live in the house. So I made this basement room for them,” Jackson said.

Jackson also paid attention to smaller details to make sure they were accurate.

“Lilo has these photos on her wall, here’s a hula lamp, a bed she made Stitch with the ugly duckling novel,” she said.

Jackson faced other constraints such as the piece limit of 3000 bricks and a requirement that the set be accessible to a wide range of ages. 

Jackson said the reason that she chose Lilo and Stitch as the inspiration for her set was because the movie has always been a big part of her life.

“When I was really young, my mom got me my first Stitch stuffed plushie,” Jackson said. “I fell in love with it. Through the years, I’ve always been obsessed with Stitch. The movie itself came out in 2002, when I was born, and it was probably the first movie I ever watched. To me, Stitch is, to quote him, he’s cute and fluffy, he’s a little bit of a monster, but he has a really good heart.”  

Jackson especially resonated with the message of “Ohana,” Hawaiian for family, which is conveyed in the franchise.

“The movie resonates with my mom and I’s relationship because I just lived with my mom growing up, and we’re very close,” Jackson explained. 

It took Jackson two years to reach the current tally of 8,000 supporters on the Lego website. She started by reaching out to her school and friends, eventually expanding her reach by creating social media accounts and traveling to local Lego Stores. Jackson even made QR codes linking to the website and distributed them at various events, such as the Charles Regatta in Boston.

At Yale, Jackson has added to her efforts by reaching out to members of the Yale community to increase the project’s following. 

“I told her that I’d stand by to help out with advertising in the college whenever the timing is conducive to helping her reach her goal,” Berkeley Head of College David Evans wrote in an email.  

But even with all the effort in advertising and design, she still feels like it was a good experience.

“It’s really important to me, and I think it’s a good idea,” Jackson said. “Probably won’t be building another one — this took a lot out of me — but I loved this experience.” 

Jackson’s Lilo and Stitch set can be found here.

Correction. Feb. 10: A previous version of this article gave the incorrect name for one of the aliens in Lilo and Stitch.