Art Featured In The LEGO Instruction Manual

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How can someone get their art featured in the LEGO® Instruction Manual? It sounds impossible with all the thousands of submissions they must get, right? Well I am proud to say it happened to my daughter, Marissa. Here are the details…

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This article was written May 2018, updated November 2018 and August 2019

Marissa is a member of Lego Message Boards Eternal, which is a fan run site. She posted a story along with a drawing (a cover photo she made of her original character, Zephyr) on the NINJAGO® Gallery on the official LEGO® site.  When you sign up to be on the Gallery, you give Lego permission to use posted items for promotion of their products. She was perfectly okay with that. She says this story is still a work in progress, but it is on the Lego Message Boards Eternal (Under the Ninjago section in the Ninjago Stories sub-forum) without the drawing.

Her cover photo was originally a mixed media drawing made of colored pencil and ink drawn on white sketch paper. She then took a photo of the picture she drew and edited it and then posted it as the cover for her story.  This story is also posted on Wattpad, a site for reading and posting stories with a different cover photo.

Marissa received a message from a message board friend. He was just opening up one of the newest LEGO® NINJAGO® Sons of Garmadon boxed sets and was looking in the instruction manual, when he recognized Marissa's artwork in the manual. He scanned the photos below and messaged her (through the Lego Message Boards Eternal) to tell her about it.  That is how she found out!

The very next day, she purchased a LEGO® NINJAGO® Sons of Garmadon Katana set and sure enough, there was her original character artwork towards the back of the manual in the ad for LEGO® Life App.

Here is Marissa's reaction to what happened: “Wow! I still can't get over it. I am really surprised. It's not even one of the main Ninjago characters. It's my own original character. I tried to get my drawing on the show, but this will be even more visible. It will be in every set in this wave. I am really happy and excited about it! I can hardly comprehend it. So many people will see it, even the creators of the set, most likely.”

My entire family and I are so proud of her!

This instruction manual will be in every box of this wave of LEGO® NINJAGO® Sons of Garmadon® Lego building boxed sets. You can tell if it is a Sons of Garmadon set because it has Garmadon's black head in the upper right corner of the box.

Update November 26, 2018! Marissa's same artwork was featured again!

My six year old son, Mason, finally earned and saved enough money to buy a Lego® Ninjago® set from the newest Hunted® series. After he built his set and showed it to the family, my 7 year old daughter, Miranda, was looking at the manual (maybe to make sure he did everything right? She takes her “big sister job” very seriously) and noticed that Marissa's artwork was in the manual and came and showed me.

Marissa is so humble about it, she said her same message board friend, had told her again this time, but she had not yet seen it. She did not even tell us! We would have bought a set sooner if we had known! What is interesting is that all the other photos have changed compared to the photos above, but hers is still there.

Here is Marissa holding the manual…

This link can help you find some of the Hunted® sets.

If my daughter can do it, so can you or your child! It's so exciting!

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