I use Project Dogwaffle for most of the work. It's pretty awesome, plus this thing that's called "optipustics" that allows you to basically paint particals. For finishing and some work (and when I wanna do bumpmapping) I use Gimp. I only have Photoshop 5.5 (it was cheap) so I only use it for overlays and finishing touches. Fireworks sounds cool, so I might save up some money (far in the future, now I'm intent on buying Flash) and buy it.