[pursuivant]

I posted this question on mission 4 today but I haven't got any answers yet. Where is the line between an authentic looking skin and a funky one? Are there any specific places that have to be camo or bare metal for it to be realistic? Were there regulations for what pilots could and could not paint on their planes?

Each country and service had its own regulations for camouflage patterns, size and shape of national markings, squadron or group markings and visibility "flashes." Regulations for personal markings varied from country to country, service to service, and on the rank and reputation of the pilot. That's why plastic and RC modelers, as well as skinners, spend so much money on books of photographs and artists' profiles of aircraft. The best way to get a sense of historical markings is to look at books and web sites which have lots of historical profiles for the plane you're interested in modeling/skinning. Once you get a sense of what "looks right," you can improvise. The Google image search function is your friend.

The big thing to keep in mind when making pseudo-historical skins is that warplanes weren't painted to make a personal fashion statement - they were painted to prevent corrosion, for camouflage, to aid identification of a particular aircraft, and to prevent "friendly fire" incidents. Personal markings were generally unofficial or "semi-official" and implied that a pilot or crew consistently used a particular airplane and had the time and money to apply personal markings. Since markings of any sort also assume a reasonable lifespan for the plane and take time and effort to apply, pilots and crews generally didn't make the effort when conditions were really bad. That's the reason that 1941-42 Soviet markings and 1945 German markings are usually boring.

With any sort of historical re-creation, there are different levels of accuracy ranging from absolute authenticity (direct copying of primary sources using the materials and techniques documented for the period - or for skinners - the markings and colors for the era based on pictures of actual aircraft) to fanciful extrapolations loosely based on historical documentation. As an artist, you have to strike a balance between the two. When you decide to be creative, however, you should mention that fact to avoid annoying the authenticity freaks. If you call your skins "semi-historical" you should briefly explain why your skin isn't a complete work of fiction (e.g., "Go229 with RLM 1941 Desert Camo for a hypothetical Desert 1946 campaign", "Brewster 229 Buffalo with Italian 1941 markings and "smoke ring" camo, as a hack for the Macci C200 Seatta.")

The sort of semi-historical skins that I find most useful are "generic" skins which follow historical conventions for markings and camouflage but make intelligent guesses about the stuff that can't be documented. (e.g., "B24 with the markings of the 3158th Composite Meteorological Squadron, based on written documentation of squadron colors and black and white photos of aircraft from a different squadron in the same Group." "Bf109K with "wild sau" nightfighter camouflage, based on RLM 1944 specifications").