The first appearance of the creative and ingenious sheep we all know and love was in Wallace and Gromit, the British stop-motion comedy franchise created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations, which lead to the world famous spin off series, Shaun the Sheep.
The character of Shaun the Sheep debuted as a young lamb who had escaped from a large sheep rustling operation and taken in by Wallace in the 1995 short film of Wallace and Gromit titled, A Close Shave.
A Close Shave: The Story
Wallace is a keen inventor operates a operates a window cleaning business with his dog, Gromit. Called out on a job, Wallace meets a wool shopkeeper, Wendolene Ramsbottom, and falls in love with her, but is unaware that her dog, Preston, rustles sheep on the sly to supply the wool in her shop.
On his return home, Wallace discovers a lost sheep has wandered into his home and has made a mess of his house. Wallace places the sheep into the Knit-o-Matic machine he invented, which washes and shears the sheep and knits the wool into sweaters. Wallace names his new pet sheep, Shaun.
Preston breaks in and seeing Wallace’s amazing Knit-o-Matic invention, Preston steals the blueprints of the machine.
When Gromit sees a lorry full of sheep behind Wendolene’s shop, he becomes suspicious and discovers Preston’s sheep rustling activities, freeing the sheep from the truck. Before he can alert the love-struck Wallace, Preston captures Gromit, and frames him for the sheep rustling instead. Gromit is thrown into prison, while Wallace’s house is inundated with the freed sheep.
In prison, Gromit receives a delivery – a sheep jigsaw puzzle. As he passes time in prison, Gromit completes the puzzle, and it has a secret message to expect a plan to escape. Wallace and the sheep break Gromit out of prison and they hide out in the countryside.
Wendolene and Preston arrive in a lorry to round up the sheep. When suddenly Wendolene rebels against Preston, demanding that he stop the sheep rustling. Preston locks Wendolene in the lorry along with the sheep and drives away, intent on turning them into dog food.
Wallace and Gromit chase the lorry on their motorcycle, but when Gromit’s sidecar detaches itself, Gromit activates its aeroplane mode and resumes the chase from the air. Wallace manages to open the lorry’s door and the sheep escape and ride the motorcycle momentarily, but Preston traps Wendolene, Wallace and the sheep in the lorry again.
They are all transported to Preston’s dog food factory, where Preston has built a replica of Wallace’s Knit-o-Matic machine. The captives are loaded into the machine’s wash basin, but Shaun escapes.
Shaun activates the factory’s neon sign to reveal its location to Gromit, who breaks into the factory and attacks Preston. Shaun manages to suck Preston into the Knit-o-Matic, where his fur is shaved off and a sweater is knitted. Wendolene reveals that Preston is actually a cyberdog robot created by her inventor father, but has malfunctioned from his original programming and turned out to be evil.
The Knit-o-Matic machine dresses him in the sweater it made from his fur and Preston becomes blinded and inadvertently hits the controls, and the group become poised to fall into a sheep mincing machine. Shaun comes to their rescue and pushes Preston into the machine, jamming it and crushing him.
Gromit is exonerated, and Wallace rebuilds Preston as a harmless remote-controlled dog. When Wendolene visits, Wallace invites her to have some cheese and crackers, but she declines due to a dairy allergy. As a disheartened Wallace decides to help himself to some cheese and crackers, he finds that Shaun’s eaten the cheese, much to his chagrin.
