How to Use gganimate in R

Overview

gganimate is an R package that allows you to animate ggplot2 visualizations. It’s useful for showing changes over time. All you need is a ggplot visual (any kind!) and a field to animate.

Step-by-Step Example

1. Load Required Libraries

library(tidyverse)
library(sf)
library(gganimate)
library(gifski)
library(tigris)  # for downloading Census shapefiles
options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)

2. Create Sample Data

set.seed(123)
states <- c("Alabama", "Alaska", "Arizona", "Arkansas", "California")  # Short list for example
years <- 2000:2005

rainbow_sightings <- expand.grid(State = states, Year = years) %>%
  mutate(Sightings = sample(0:100, n(), replace = TRUE))

3. Download US Census Shapefile

shapefile_path <- "C:\\Users\\herzi\\Downloads\\cb_2018_us_state_5m\\cb_2018_us_state_5m.shp"
states_sf <- st_read(shapefile_path)

Reading layer `cb_2018_us_state_5m' from data source 
  `C:\Users\herzi\Downloads\cb_2018_us_state_5m\cb_2018_us_state_5m.shp' 
  using driver `ESRI Shapefile'
Simple feature collection with 56 features and 9 fields
Geometry type: MULTIPOLYGON
Dimension:     XY
Bounding box:  xmin: -179.1473 ymin: -14.55255 xmax: 179.7785 ymax: 71.35256
Geodetic CRS:  NAD83

# Keep only the 50 states + DC
states_sf <- states_sf %>%
  filter(!STATEFP %in% c("60", "66", "69", "72", "78"))

# Match name field to sample data
states_sf$NAME <- trimws(states_sf$NAME)

4. Merge Data

map_data <- states_sf %>%
  left_join(rainbow_sightings, by = c("NAME" = "State"))

5. Create an Animated Map

animated_map <- ggplot() +
  geom_sf(data = map_data, aes(fill = Sightings)) +
  scale_fill_viridis_c() +
  theme_minimal() +
  transition_time(Year) +
  labs(title = "Rainbow Sightings: {frame_time}", fill = "Sightings")

6. Render and Save the Animation

animated_map

Sample code for visualization!

#For making visuals with ggplot2, check out https://ggplot2-book.org

#animate(plotname, duration = durationlength, fps = fpsrate, width = width, height = height, renderer = gifski_renderer())

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