Only Fools and Rip-offs

Another classic only fools t-shirt this time – you can imagine Damien wearing this one…

We decided to catchup with Tim Burdett who provided us with some great Rip-offs a few years back – We asked Tim to tell us more about himself and what inspired these great ripoffs including this new one released today

My name is Tim Burdett and I’m a Graphic Designer from Woking, Surrey. I started my own business 6 years ago, I work from home and I love my job, I feel very lucky for that.

About 5 years ago I was looking on OFAH.net, as I have always been a big fan of Only Fools & Horses (who isn’t?!) and I noticed that the site had a section called Rip Offs and there was a message requesting that people send in their own Rip Offs. As I have been creating these sort of designs for many years, for friends and family, I thought I’d knock a few up and send them off. I had such a great response from Zane at OFAH.net that I decided to create a few more and then some more after that.

A few months later I was in my car with my fiancée Louise. She was reading a Sunday Newspaper, either the Sunday Mail or the Sunday Times, can’t quite remember. She was thumbing through one of the supplements and as I glanced across and saw one of the Rip Offs I had produced. It was ‘Rodnaldo’ which I had produced as a set of three (the others being Del Boy Piero and Uncle Albertini). The article was about viral emails and they featured a few that they obviously felt were good, one of which was ‘Rodnaldo’. I was used to seeing my work in the newspapers as I was a designer for an advertising agency for many years but to see they had used ‘Rodnaldo’ from all of the billions of virals that are out there was just wonderful.

I recently contacted Zane again about the Rip Offs that I had produced and he asked if would be happy to create some more and maybe write a bit about where my ideas come from, so here goes.

When I create this sort of thing the main aim is to make them look as real as possible and as funny as possible. I see lots of other people designs on websites and viral emails etc. and think they would have been so much better if more time had been spent on blending the images together more effectively.

As far as where the actual concept for each design comes from it’s hard for me to say, I just try to think of things that link something to do with Only Fools & Horses and other famous people/movies etc. When a good idea pops into my head I search the internet for as good a quality image as possible and then start retouching them together to see how well it works. 99% of the time I can find what I want and all goes well. Every now and again I think this isn’t working and ditch it.

It’s important to choose images that work together, heads and faces looking in the right direction, adjusting colours, brightness and contrast so they match the original image nicely. Apart from that it’s all about artistic ability to make the final thing blend well and look as good as possible.

I mainly use Adobe Photoshop to create these designs and sometimes I use Adobe Illustrator for text and illustrations that then get imported into Photoshop. There’s a massive amount of tutorials and tips on the internet for anyone that wants to have a go creating something using the Apps. I’m sure Zane @ OFAH.net would be very happy if there was a sudden influx of Rip Offs from OFAH fans!

Being creative has been a shining light for most of my life, being able to earn a good living from it is great but creating this sort of thing can be even more rewarding, it’s nice not to have a client chasing you up over a ridiculously short deadlines too!

More Rip-offs Tomorrow