Credit the Crew of Mercury Filmworks - Disney TV's Vendor Studio Credit Policy Has to Change

 The new Disney show The Ghost and Molly McGee will debut in October on Disney Channel. 

(16) First Day Frights 👻 | NYCC Sneak Peek | The Ghost and Molly McGee | Disney Channel Animation - YouTube

I was taken aback at how fantastic the show looks and moves in the clip from Comic Con. Mercury Filmworks, the vendor studio, did an absolutely gorgeous job here, from the excellent character acting on Molly to the stunning builds of Scratch, the ghost to the exquisite background work by the layout team of Molly's attic. It's a shame that the all mightily talented crew of character and FX animators, builders and riggers, layout and backgrounds, technical directors, compositors, and scene set-up people who all made this possible will most likely go uncredited for their hard efforts as has been the case on all series that they have contributed towards.

Disney has had a history of shunting out credit to any of their outsourcing studios, of which Mercury Filmworks has been a frequent victim of their misdeeds. Every show that has Disney Television Animation outsource their animation process to Mercury has almost always gone without credit for the Mercury crew. It doesn't matter how excellent or jaw-dropping their quality shows on-screen, the crews of vendor studios are not allowed to receive their deserved credits asides from a top show-encompassing animation supervisor name here and the studio name there. I have always been frustrated with this credits measure from Disney and any other studio that dabbles in this policy.

What follows is the nine total Disney series that have went creditless for the amazing crew at Mercury Filmworks since all the way back to 2010, from Kick Buttowski to Tangled.

Well, at least Disney credited one person out of potenially hundreds of Mercury people on Lion Guard and Mickey. That's real improvement right there.

Ha ha ha, spoke too soon. Christian Larocque was the animation director on the Tangled series also, and Disney somehow couldn't give him the same credit here as in Lion Guard despite being in the same role. They couldn't even manage getting that consistent.

Disney is able to do full credits of Mercury, as they have done so for a single Lion Guard special episode ("Battle for the Pride Lands"), which is even more frustrating because it's not a consistent practice for the other series specials which either are creditless, like the other Lion Guard specials, or use a very truncated list of leads (???) without listing which person did what job as in the Tangled specials.

This is what Disney's credit policy should have been for the past nine series, and the fact that it's only been used on one special and nothing else is saddening.

And we just go back to square one by the next regular episode of the season. Sigh.

This is the credits list that Disney uses for the Tangled special episodes. It's very confusing why it doesn't list out the positions/disciplines of the jobs. Are these people part of builds? Animators? Layout team? We just don't know. It is just so cryptic as to which role these people performed in making these shows beautiful. Sorta useless as credits if you don't give out the necessary information on the specific roles these people played. Also, this is all Mercury gets compared to the Lion Guard Special, this one short-length credits card compared to three long-length credit cards on consecutive screens. Which means that tons of other crew is getting left out altogether.

On Molly McGee, I hope that Disney can come to their senses and give the Mercury crew their due time in the spotlight. Their talent has done some incredible things with each and every Disney series that they have touched for the past eleven years. They should have gotten full credits as early as their first series, Kick Buttowski  for all of their amazing ingenuity and skill. Everyone on a production needs to be recognized for being amazing people who give us such amazing quality for no credit of their own.