Well, would you consider my piece a "blatant rip-off"?
Depends if we're going by the image or the intent.
When you say things like
Well, here is the piece in question followed by my attempt at making something like it
on a public forum, lawyers can hear tills ringing. You'd better hope he's not a litigous guy because regardless of the similarity in the images or not, you just made a legal challenge on copyright grounds a whole lot easier for him.