Actually, both take a lot of time if you want to get it done right. If only people who use the fill tool would try to spend more than just half an hour on one skin painting, just take the time needed to make a proper skin. You know, add lot's of (necessary) details, and would look for some general painting tutorials, etc. ...

It seems just a handful of people are prepared to spend some time learning this, but it could greatly improve the overall quality of the games shown here on the forums .. I'm not critisizing anyone here, I've experienced myself that learning to digitally paint costs a LOT of time. (Still not done learning.)

Some people seem to think that shaders make a model look good, but infact it's the textures for 90+ % that makes it look good. Shaders can only make it a bit better, or way way worse. (I definately agree that bump mapping or parallax mapping and perhaps even specular mapping improve a model a lot, Frank_g's textures are a good example, however even there you see that it's actually the artwork that's making it great).

Cheers