During his time in Madison, he attended filmmaking classes at the University of Wisconsin and began making experimental films. Due to a new found love for creating animated films, he picked up stakes in 1983 and moved to Boulder/Denver to change careers. Once settled, he found freelance work doing traditional cell animation work with a couple of the animation production houses in the area. Having become aware of the coming wave of industry change, due to the power of computers for making pictures, he found further educational opportunity by interning with GW Hannaway and Assoc. in Boulder. There he gained computer skills and experience in the growing computer graphics industry. Then in about 1985, he was hired at Z-Axis Corp. in Aurora, CO, as their Computer Animator. This was an opportunity available to few others at the time. Z-Axis was one of the first companies in the world to have a specialized computer for 3 dimensional video animation production. Then in 1988, he left the intense atmosphere of TV production for an equally demanding position at Design Work Shop, Inc., an urban design and landscape architecture firm in Aspen and Denver. Dan was in charge of the computer graphics department for their effort to bring specialized 3D computers into the design process.