A mountain drawing can change character without changing the mountain. Move the viewpoint and one ridge opens while another falls behind it. Tilt the scene, and the relationship between the terrain and the ground becomes a different drawing problem.
In October I explored those changes in CDW with an animation showing terrain rotation, tilt, shading and hatch controls. The video was assembled from actual generated geometry with edited timing; it is a study of the changing drawing, not a recording of real-time performance.
Changing the viewpoint is only one way to read a terrain. The light controls also let me hold the view fixed and move the light, changing which slopes carry the shading. That becomes especially clear with pale ink on black paper.
That motion suggested another way to put the investigation on paper: hold one formation constant and look at it every 15 degrees. Twenty-four views make a complete circle. Rather than choosing one favorite view immediately, the sheet lets the views speak to one another: the same ridges turn, overlap and reveal different silhouettes.
The idea later became a 24-view study of Lawetlat’la. Seeing that sheet plotted brought the question back to the physical page: how small can the labels be, how much line can a pen hold, and how does the paper stay registered? The 0.7 mm gel pen labels were small but readable in the test. The result is both a landscape and a record of looking around it.
CDW terrain animation, October 2026. Generated geometry with edited timing. This procedural terrain animation does not depict Lawetlat’la.
