Creeping wave modes on smooth structures are of importance in the control of scattering properties, such as radar cross section of such structures. We have shown a novel procedure to examine the excitation of creeping wave modes by plane wave illumination of a perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) cylinder. Detailed information about transients of creeping wave modes and their spatial structure, have been obtained for the first time using Singular Value decomposition (SVD) analysis of 3-D Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) data. The transient analysis shows how the amplitudes of different modes vary in time, and how the dominant modes eventually stabilize to the time-harmonic solution given by analytical methods. Although the method is computationally expensive, this technique will be particularly useful for purely transient signals, complex geometries and situations involving spatially- varying material properties such as a plasma shielded object