I guess just to throw my two cents in, I’ll start by saying that I am not the one responsible for Awful Emblem’s sprites, or animations, or really anything of note outside of the story. I don’t put hours of work into our mugs or anything, and I appreciate everything that Tyty and Ryu have done on those fronts, and I absolutely do not speak for them.
With that said, I agree mostly with Klok. Should there be a “grace period” where no one but us can use our stuff? Absolutely, it would be ridiculous to find one of our mugs in some random hack before ours was even out. And yes, if you commissioned a mug or an animation, then it’s…well, yours. You paid for it, and if someone else really wants to use it as well, they can pay for it too. But aside from those situations, why not put these sprites back out there for people to use? As long as they’re properly credited to the artist in question, is anyone really going to get indignant over Mediocre Hack #579 that that no one is ever going to remember using a mug that was made far more famous in Dream of Five or Elibean Nights? Especially since in a community as close as this one, that hack is going to get called out on it anyway.
Sure, it “devalues” your hack if someone else uses your mugs and/or animations, but if those were the only things your hack had going for it, maybe you’ve got bigger problems. Hell, if you have a mug that looked so good that someone else said “Yes, I want this for my hack too,” guess what? Even if that hack crashes and burns, even if a thousand other hacks use that sprite and subsequently crash and burn, that sprite has not stopped looking good in your hack. And I think that’s something to be proud of.
And hey, if this really is such an epidemic, there are plenty of existing ways you can deal with it. Look at Gamemaker, Unity, or RPG Maker - if you have the knowledge to make your own custom stuff, great! If you don’t (and I imagine that’s a lot of us here), that’s okay too. You can use the built-in stuff if you really have to (which in this case would be the existing sprites in-game), or you can go into the asset store and get whatever you need. Some stuff is free, some stuff you have to toss a couple bucks out for, but there is a library of stuff out there for those of us who don’t have the chops to do everything and there’s no reason that we couldn’t put together some kind of “storefront” for FE Hacking. You don’t want your mugs being “devalued” by showing up in every hack under the sun? Put an unusable jpg preview of it up and ask for a couple bucks if someone wants the real deal. Unless you absolutely, positively do not want anyone ever using it and fuck you for asking, that seems to be a win-win for everyone - a larger library of stuff out there that anyone can use (whether as a base or to just pop it right in), and it means that there’s a use for some of those old practice mugs or animations that were made for a project that didn’t make it.
Or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass here, I don’t know. But I fundamentally agree that the existing library of stuff out there for public use isn’t great (especially for mugs) and it would be nice if we were able to recirculate some of the older or unused stuff to make everyone’s lives a little easier.