Over the course of the past two months I learned that our company might be bought out by Zynga, flew out to San Francisco for an interview by Zynga, learned that we were indeed being bought out by Zynga, and then subsequently left behind what was my life in Wisconsin in order to start anew in California. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem much has changed. I've got a few friends who moved out here from Wisco a while back, and the team that I've been working with over the past three or four years all moved out here, too. So now, I'm basically doing the exact same thing that I was before, just in a new area, and from an actual office instead of my house.

Two things.

1) If there's anybody in the San Francisco area that likes meeting awesome new people, let me know, as I'm down to make more friends.

2) If there are any flash developers looking for a really great place to work, Zynga is aggressively hiring and offers some amazing benefits to boot.

Heh, my cousin works at Zynga. Good luck and congrats!

It looks like I got two responses that were pretty impressive.  Awesome!

I have to get into this networking stuff though.  Do you know anywhere I can find good musicians and sfx guys?

It depends somewhat on the kind of music you're looking for.
If you're not sure about a particular style, TIGsource is a great place to start for this too.
If you want chiptune-style music, check out http://www.8bitcollective.com/ for a great range of talent. Of course you could also contact some of the chiptune labels (http://www.iimusic.net/, http://www.8bitpeoples.com/) and see if any of their artists are interested in jobs. The chiptune/8bit community is really what I'm most familiar with.
Speaking of netlabels in general, though, you can also check out this site. And then of course there's always Newgrounds, but I can't speak for the talent as it's so huge in popularity.
You'll also find a lot of talented musicians in the demoscene, which has ties to both pixel art and chiptune. In fact, one could say both mediums grew in popularity at a certain time period because of the scene.

Good luck!

Just a personal opinion: I'm not sure the buster needs the flame effect at all, but if you do add it, I'd recommend not trying to go with "more interesting unpredictable colors". Interesting, yes, but not intentionally unpredictable (or interesting only because they're unpredictable). I think so far the green and pink against the strong blue sheen of the buster really weaken its sharp-cut impact. It would be interesting to see what you could do to the buster without adding a flame effect but just polishing the sword alone.

I was going to do a thorough response to this but then I though why bother, I'll just reiterate my original point:

Talk is cheap, show me something of similar quality done in an hour. So far all I've heard is talk and statements like "you just aren't good enough", and "you gotta have the right workflow" .

EvilEye, please at least read the last three paragraphs of ndchristie's post before outright dismissing it. I've been curious about some of those questions too - why are you so intent on "proving" that "good" pixel art can't be done within an hour? Why should it matter?

Follow it up with a pixel art outline - without colours, just the line art...

Or perhaps, to better illustrate 3 dimensional form (and the way light hits an object), just "block in" the volumes. Even if it's just using a large brush in grayscale.
See this post by AdomAtomic for more info: http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=6794.msg79015#msg79015