Nocturna

Amanda Wray was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to American parents. Her first five years were spent in Hue, Vietnam, where her father worked to help local farmers improve their irrigation systems. Her mother, an artist, painted watercolors and hosted parties for local dignitaries. The family later settled in Southern California, between wetlands and orange groves, where the most important things were books, dance, a menagerie of pets, and drawing. From an early age, she would recite poetry, mostly as odes to dolls and teddy bears, and when she was large enough she could sometimes be seen riding her chestnut quarter horse around town. Her childhood studies included music and dance, but her shyness inhibited her from being comfortable in front of most people. Difficulties with enunciating didn't help matters, and she spent many hours reading aloud with her mother to rectify the situation. Years later she was determined to overcome her shyness, as well as capitalize on her writing ability and, to this end, earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Cal State University, Fullerton. After graduation, she wrote articles for the Saddleback Valley News, earning two awards, and later became an education reporter for the Daily Pilot, covering Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. Her love of animals eventually took her to become an assistant editor for Dog Fancy magazine, during which time she wrote articles for both Horse Illustrated and Wild Bird magazine. In this period she also wrote a children's instructional book on windsurfing, studied novel writing, screen writing and became a volunteer reader for Recording for the Blind. She has also tutored English while living in Florence, Italy, and is currently a volunteer reader for Librivox. Following her time in Italy, she returned to school to study graphic design, for which her childhood days spent drawing would bear fruit. Her many years studying dance may have also played a part in her eventual decision to study movement-based graphic design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. As part of her studies, she experimed with simple animation, interactive games, film titles and broadcast design. She eventually settled on web design, for which her expressions are limited only by bandwidth. Her clients have ranged from large corporations, such as Kaiser Permanente, to small boutique creative studios. Her favorite project was a website for the legendary Shangri-La Recording Studios in Malibu, California. She hopes to merge her interest in web design, collage, animation, and storytelling, while at the same time expanding her client base into the field of entertainment, fashion, travel and leisure. She has also written reviews for AIGA and has most recently been interviewed about web design by Rapaport Magazine and about blogging by the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. She currently runs a small design studio in Monrovia, California, called Wrayco Design. She also maintains a personal weblog, Living in Monrovia, in which she documents the small-town flavor of her city. She can also be seen dancing the polka at seasonal Victorian Balls both in her first life and her Second Life. Her family includes a black Standard Poodle named Theo and an orange tabby cat named Maji.