Shaun the Sheep at all, even from the human characters; simple grunts, bleats, pointing, sighs, mutterings, words, and similar wordless inflections are all used to indicate each character's moods and motives. There are also no readable words in any episode, although "Bitzer" can be seen on a dog bowl, and—in series four--"Mossy Bottom Farm" on a gate, in the original English-language title sequence. All other signage, such as on a pizza box or a bus stop, is replaced by an illegible scrawl and a picture. Shaun the Sheep's first appearance was in "Wallace & Gromit"s third short feature, the Academy Award-winning "A Close
Shaun the Sheep Movie transformed into Rube Goldberg devices." Colin Covert of the Minneapolis "Star Tribune" gave the film four out of four stars, saying "Sometimes the simplest movies are the best. Case in point: "Shaun the Sheep", a dialogue-free, non-digitally designed, plain old stop-motion animated film that is hilarious beyond human measure." Guy Lodge of "Variety" gave the film a positive review, saying, "Though realized on a more modest scale than other Aardman features, the film is still an absolute delight in terms of set and character design, with sophisticated blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detailing to counterbalance the franchise’s cruder visual trademarks." Joe McGovern of "Entertainment