Lego

Lego not child's play - ask Beckham

TOY JOY: David Beckham loves to build with Lego bricks with his kids.

What calms football icon David Beckham these days?

Not a game of football nor his wife Posh Spice, but playing with Lego building bricks.

   The former England football captain has spoken again about his love of the children's toy, reported UK newspaper The Mirror.

   "When the kids come home from school, we'll often play one of their favourite games, like Connect 4," he said.

   "They also love Lego. So do I... I think Lego sometimes helps to calm me down."

   He told the Sunday Times Magazine he loved making Lego creations with his children and even bought a model of London's iconic Tower Bridge.

   "The last big thing I made was Tower Bridge," he told the magazine. "It had about 1,000 pieces."

   The model costs £210 and is more than 90cm long. It has more than 80 windows, a black taxi to drive across and a drawbridge which opens and closes, reported Daily Mail.

   Beckham moved back to the UK from Los Angeles last year with wife Victoria and children Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper.

   They now live in a luxury west London home.

TAJ MAHAL

Lego-mad Beckham even has a Lego Taj Mahal, a 5,900-piece kit that is no longer sold by Lego and has become a collector's item.

   A second-hand one on Amazon is priced at about £1,300. One model was on sale for more than £2,900.

   But despite its value, Beckham said he never finished building the marble mausoleum.

   He said in a Q&A by search engine Yahoo in 2010: "It's going to make me sound really weird, but when I was in Milan, I had such a big amount of time on my hands that I found online that there's a Taj Mahal Lego that you can buy."

   Beckham added: "I know it's not a career but I love doing it. My boys are the same - they're obessed with building Lego."

   His love of Lego is so well-documented that his career highlights were even immortalised in plastic blocks last year by Japanese film-makers Mori Pictures.

   Another personality who found joy in Lego is Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond, who has said that building Lego models aided his recovery from a 480kmh jet car crash that nearly killed him in 2006.

   "Lego saved my life. It's really good therapy for a brain injury," he told The Mirror previously.

   In the magazine interview, Beckham gave an account of his average day in his new family home in Kensington, west London.

   He only spends five minutes getting ready for the day, he revealed, and likes going to his local pubs for a pint because "the people there know me".

   Beckham also relaxes by cooking or drinking a glass of red wine.

   He added that he had met Prime Minister David Cameron "quite a few times too", but added: "He's a really nice guy, but I'm not sure I could go and invite myself to Number 10 in the same way."

6 steps to making your own Lego movie

GROUND UP: Those behind The Lego Movie must have had great fun putting it together.

We all grew up playing with Lego, but the team behind The Lego Movie has taken things to a whole new level. It tells the story of a humble Lego construction worker who discovers he is actually a Master Builder. Student and Lego enthusiast

Below are the steps to show you how to make your own Lego movie

1. WORK OUT A SIMPLE SCRIPT

Write a script with a simple plot and with only a few scenes or no more than three mini figures. It could be as simple as a man taking a walk in a park and tripping on a rock. You should not try to create a complicated storyline if you are just starting out.

   We are shooting this movie with the app iMotion HD on an iPad or iPhone (free to download for iOS devices, the export option costs US$1.99).

   The technique called stop motion, makes a physically manipulated object look like it's moving when played back at normal speed.

2. GET SOME BRICKS

The fundamental ingredient in this project are the Lego bricks and before you fire off a single frame, a Lego baseplate (50x50) is needed. This is for you to build the background scene and it ensures that your Lego mini figure and background bricks have enough studs to sit on.

   The background can be anything from a few Lego trees to a Lego house, depending on your storyboard and the amount of bricks you have to work on.

   This is where your imagination kicks in. Now, all you need is a Lego mini figure to begin shooting.

3. SET UP THE SCENE

Place your Lego baseplate on a sturdy table, preferably against a wall, and keep it down with Blu-tack. Place two lamps on either sides of the baseplate, but cover the lamps with butter paper to lessen the glare on the mini figure. They help ensure that the light in the room does not affect the lighting on your mini figure.

   Make sure that your iPhone/iPad has a stable base to rest on, you want to ensure that it does not shift when you click on it while shooting.

   Set up all the props and scenery for the first scene.

4. SHOOT AND MOVE

First, take a few shots of the background to establish the scene. For every frame, make sure that the mini figure moves very slightly.

   Move the figure slightly, then shoot one frame. Repeat the process until you have finished the scene.

   Make sure that throughout the filming, your background remain still.

   After taking about 20 photos, stop and check if it runs smoothly. Adjust the speed of frames per second (a suitable range would be from 12 to 20 frames per second). Keep checking on it every 20 to 30 frames.

5. MUSIC AND MAGIC

For this project, the post-production software we are using is called iMovie (US$5.99 from Apple AppStore).

   You have to export your stop-motion video directly to iMovie, which enables you to add music, sound effects and even captions to your video. Make sure that the sound effects match the movements of the mini figure to make it seem coordinated.

6. UPLOAD AND SHARE

From iMovie, you finished project can be uploaded to several social media websites such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

   After uploading it, your friends will be able to watch it and share it with more people.

TIP: BASIC WALKING CYCLE (Repeat with right leg and loop frames)

Q&A WITH THE DOUCHE-BAT

Batman is a hero to millions, but Lego Batman shows us a side of the Dark Knight we have not really seen before.

The douchebag side.

   He joins The Lego Movie's REAL hero Emmet on a quest to stop a villainnfrom glueing the Lego universe together, and along the way he reveals himself to be a dunderhead, womaniser and all-round weirdo.

   He is also funny as heck.

For someone like you, who spent most of his career moving in the shadows, what is it like now, being in front of all those lights and cameras?

Wait... I'm in a movie? Do my lawyers know this?

We'll check on that. About secret identities, did keeping one up for so long make it easy for you?

I don't have a secret identity.

Who's behind that cowl?

A guy with a headband.

What if we took that cowl off?

Pretty tough to do that without arms.

Okay... Aside from the occasional sidekick, you pretty much work alone. How do you handle fighting alongside other heroes?

As long as they watch out for the Batarang, they should be fine, 'cause once the Batarang starts flyin', the bad guys start cryin'.

Would you ever consider taking on Emmet as your sidekick?

Emmet was the pink one with the forehead horn, right?

No...

Oh, he's the blind guy with the beard. Uhhh... he's fine.

Are you excited about seeing yourself on the big screen?

Yeah, as long as I'm not some sidekick relegated to a couple of one-note jokes, it should be perfect.

Matthew 5:22