1. Lots and lots of layers. In FM2, you are allowed 1000 layers per car. That's basically enough to create any masterpiece you can fathom.
2. You can do them right away. You just need to buy a car (which you get $20,000 to buy a car with at the beginning). From there, the paint is free. However, the "extras" cost like wheel rims, wheel sizes/compositions, various ground kits and spoilers, and such. Nevertheless, the paint is all free.
3. I'm nowhere near as good as ANYONE that's made a great car. However, within 10-15 minutes, you can usually make a pretty sweet (but basic design not really resembling anything).
To create what they do with.......Something from a Manga, takes a few hours. The Gears of War car might of taken an hour or two. But it's not really bad.
The sad part? The car tuning is just as crazy - there are dozens of things you can do to your car to tune it to real life standards - the telemetry (the various real-time car facts are crazier than the paint job editor).
Overall, even if you don't like racing, the paint jobs, tunings, and such are just as engrossing, and fun. The realtime racing shots via photo mode are just ungodly.
The best part? All paint jobs are savable and transferrable to ANY of the 300+ cars in the game. That paint job you start on your 1987 Toyota Turino Sport can go on your 2007 Crystler ME 12.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
