yeah i'm making an anime skin based on macross 2 picture that i found that looks great but anyone know if its ok to use pics that you find or will i be getting legal letters from pissed off ppl from the net?

Making skins based on copyrighted stuff is pretty much OK, unless the author of the work has specifically indicated that he/she wants to be asked for permission to use it. Count the number of Limp Bizkit skins, and ask yourself whether you think the makers of these skins all wrote to Limp Bizkit and/or the photographer to ask for permission.

In short, I'd go for it. If anyone gives you grief about it, I'd pull it from the winamp.com site, but keep it for personal use. :D

I make anime skins as well.
And all of us fellow anime skinners don't worry.
The only thing you'd have to worry about, is if your site got big enough to where you were getting millions of hits a month...then they'd come and find ya.

But untill then, you're good.

<plug>
You like anime, and anime skins, eh?
Sephiroticum.NET
Anime-skins.com
</plug>

You could if you wanted offer your skins to say the official sites of the characters you are skinning as a courtesty, if they use them great, more publicity to you, if they don't well at least you can say you offered.

I've only tried this once and the site in question didn't even bother to reply to my mail, there tuff look :)

Back to the day job :)