Exclusive Interview: Jeff Shorkey creator of ‘Don’t Feed the Humans’

There is a growing animation scene in Canada, and we’ve sort of been the only ones acknowledging it for pretty much since we’ve been open. Mother Up!, Fugget About It, Crash Canyon, and Ben’s City are all examples of animated sitcoms produced in Canada that adhere to an older audience that is made FOR Canadian audiences. Fugget About It is Teletoon at Night’s success story, and now Bite TV has one and it’s called Bite on Mondo. One of the best featured animated shorts on the series is from Jeff Shorkey called Don’t Feed the Humans.

The series follows a group of humans that are abducted by aliens that are then put on for paying aliens for their amusement. The idea is novel, but as it turns out, it wasn’t Jeff’s FIRST idea. As a matter of fact, when Jeff started pitching ideas to Bite on Mondo, his first run of ideas were all passed on. However, the network wanted to see more from Jeff, ergo, Don’t Feed the Humans gets the pickup. So, it sounds like Jeff’s been producing cartoons forever, right? Despite the fact that Jeff did go to film school and moonlighted as a stand up comedian, nowadays he works in advertising. With producing ads comes working on scripts and sometimes producing cartoons sometimes became part of the MO. But creating cartoons FOR television? Well, that all came by accident! ”I’m good friends with Chris and Bart from World Doctors and Tuck and Ranger. I’m in advertising, so I’m used to writing TV spots and actually do a lot of cartoon stuff in advertising. I kind of just fell into this, but its interesting because I grew up on The Simpsons. I don’t approach this series like a cartoon, its funny and interesting that happens to be animated.”

While coming up with the concept of the series, Jeff took on the role of Jack of whom he admits, is really just a more neurotic version of himself of which Bite on Mondo producers actually pitched. ‘‘Jeff is a self-loathing version of myself which comes as a result of me torturing myself to make the show.” The cast is comprised of  people that Jeff knows including members of his family, co-workers, and more. Their mission is to converge into this world which pretty lays out the law of the land for its characters ‘to me its about a range of people, I wanted a different swath of people that would react differently to different things.’ Obviously, Jeff’s character ‘Jack’ tries to be the leader of what is inherently a shitty situation, but at the end of the day he’s trying to manage people that are pirates or gladiators, or doctors, really the list and personality type is endless. And while we don’t know where these characters really come from, Jeff has noted that origin stories for the characters in Don’t Feed the Humans would be a fun project to do, so while we haven’t heard of when these episodes would come, I think it’s safe to say it isn’t ruled out.