Lisa Reeves’s The Wandering Birds System, published on LilyPixel Lab on October 26, 2026, reminded me of the terrain rotation view we have been working on in CDW. There is a similar interest in how a form reads as its direction changes, and how those small changes affect the whole composition.
Reeves starts with a grid, then loosens it with staggered rows and small shifts in position. A curved path guides the flock, with birds more likely to appear near the path than at its edges. Perlin noise varies their direction in related patches, so nearby birds turn together without every bird pointing the same way.
Three weighted poses supply the basic vocabulary. Differences in wing angle, length and curve add variety, while a final overlap check removes birds whose outlines touch. The result has a shared direction but leaves room for individual shapes and open space.
A connection to the terrain studies
In One terrain, many points of view, the formation stays the same while the camera moves around it. Ridges overlap differently, silhouettes change, and another composition appears. Reeves’s birds are drawn from varied poses rather than presented as a rotating 3D scene, but both studies make the relationship between direction and shape worth looking at closely.
For CDW, this suggests a useful experiment: keep a small family of marks consistent, then compare changes in orientation, spacing and density across a sheet. The terrain work already offers a way to compare viewpoints. A bird or motif system would be a separate exploration, not an existing CDW feature.
The open space is part of the reference too. A few related marks can suggest movement without filling every available position. That is something to carry back to the terrain drawings, where the gaps between lines help the surface read.
Read Lisa Reeves’s original article and view the bird study at LilyPixel Lab.
