I guess for me on this situation, I see the obvious recreation of a lot of features along with the changes made "cleverly" to make it not the same.
Generally speaking, most younger artists will be impressionable when it comes to others artist's styles. They'll want to draw the same way, have the same look, and be as good as that artist is. Its actually how a lot of them start to find their own style, but some of them go about it wrong.
It's one thing to trace. Its one thing to heavily reference. It's one thing to be inspired by. Its one thing to rip off. And it's one thing to create.
Tracing is obvious. Its okay to do, you should ask for permission first, but while fine, you have to be respectful. If you're posting it, you need permission and need to give credit. You can't claim it and should never do anything else with it because it isn't yours.
Heavily referencing is a tricky one which differs based on the medium. Most times if you're heavily referencing a photograph, it's not too bad because you're not simply copying and most people actually do photography for People to use for referencing of different subjects. With drawings however, it borders and is based on what you're referencing exactly. To me, pose referencing from drawings isn't bad because most of the time people don't directly copy the exact pose, but instead they're referencing posture or position. If you have a hard time drawing a dog's paw from a certain angle, you might reference a drawing to see how someone else does it to help you capture it better. A bad example of heavily referencing is simply copying a pose and style perhaps, and then recreating it into something you're trying to draw. "Pose stealing" isn't real, you can't draw a dog sitting and claim the pose, however, if you blatantly copy a pose down to the same paw position directly from a drawing, then that's wrong, and what makes it wrong is re-creation. You're recreating artwork that isn't yours and taking the credit. If you were to ask permission to recreate a piece by someone else and allowed to, then it's re-creation with your own twist and given proper credit. If you do it without permission it's still re-creation, but it's a changed copy of someone's else's work, which is still stealing.
Inspiration is not the same as referencing. Inspiration is more of a drive to do something a certain way or use certain subjects, or to jump on to a movement. Its an independent idea or creation you make or think of based upon someone else's. For example, if someone drew Scooby Doo in their own style, you could say you were inspired and draw Scooby Doo in your own style or even draw a different cartoon character in your own style. (People on YouTube might argue this with idea stealing, but I'm not getting into that), but another example, an artist decides to cut woodblock and make a stamp of their OC. You can be inspired to make a woodblock stamp of your pet cat. Someone tries a new shading technique. You can be inspired by that to try a new shading technique too. It's basically one person with an idea and someone getting a relative idea from it. Inspiration is not copying exactly what some else draws, etc. Of course if someone draws ScoobyDoo, you're more than welcome to draw Scooby Fucking Doo. But if someone draws an adopt or OC and then you draw it too and change it a little and all that, that's not inspiration, that's just copying with the defending phrase of "but it's different," or "its not the same." You can be inspired to try new colour palettes someone else has used, but it's not "inspiration" to draw the same exact thing pose for pose, line for line, or make the same design that they did using it, that's just copying, and anyway around it is someone trying to justify copying.
Rip off is kind of what I just touched on, being that it's simply a copy of something claimed not to be a copy because it's changed slightly to not be the same. Rip offs just tend to be more obvious. Its a bad example because they're not very unique overall, but Kalons for example, they have tail shines. If someone made a cat species and let's say they too had shines, but these ones are on their face, instead of tails, that's most likely a rip off. Its a cat species, with shines. Only difference is placement. Again, it's a bad example because there's not a lot of uniqueness, but it's a simple idea. Just adding wings and changing a colour doesn't make it new. Its a rip off. Making it a different gender, giving it a smaller tail, calling it Chester instead of Sally, doesn't make it new. Its a rip off. Rip offs happen at all different levels but are more commonly seen with simple things nowadays because they're easier to rip off. However there are such things as coincidental situations, but like I said, it's typically more common with simple things. Its hard to say that a full black dog with white paws is a rip off of someone else's but it's easier to see that someone ripped off a dinosaur species that have robotic tails, and hooves for feet and beards for both genders when someone makes the same thing, but gives them wings and changes the amount of eyes they must have.
Lastly, creation, that is your own idea. That's where you made a colour palette on your own or just found one, and you pictured a dragon flying in your head and drew it and coloured it with how you imagined it and named it Henry and whatever else. That's your idea. You didn't look at someone's dragon named Harry and just changed the colours. You didn't trace a picture of Spyro and made your own from it without credit, etc.
Hoped that helped. I spared a few details, but I'm sure you get it.
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