Animated bubble chart with R and gganimate



The gganimate package allows to build animated chart using the ggplot2 syntax directly from R. This post shows how to apply it on a bubble chart, to show an evolution in time.

Bubble section Data to Viz

Animated bubble chart


Before trying to build an animated plot with gganimate, make sure you understood how to build a basic bubble chart with R and ggplot2.

The idea is to add an additional aesthetics called transition_..() that provides a frame variable. For each value of the variable, a step on the chart will be drawn. Here, transition_time() is used since the frame variable is numeric.

Note that the gganimate automatically performs a transition between state. Several options are available, set using the ease_aes() function.

# Get data:
library(gapminder)
 
# Charge libraries:
library(ggplot2)
library(gganimate)
 
# Make a ggplot, but add frame=year: one image per year
ggplot(gapminder, aes(gdpPercap, lifeExp, size = pop, color = continent)) +
  geom_point() +
  scale_x_log10() +
  theme_bw() +
  # gganimate specific bits:
  labs(title = 'Year: {frame_time}', x = 'GDP per capita', y = 'life expectancy') +
  transition_time(year) +
  ease_aes('linear')

# Save at gif:
anim_save("271-ggplot2-animated-gif-chart-with-gganimate1.gif")

Use small multiple


Since gganimate is a ggplot2 extension, any ggplot2 option can be used to customize the chart. Here, an example using facet_wrap() to use small multiple on the previous chart, spliting the chart window per continent.

Important note: this example comes from the gganimate homepage.

# Get data:
library(gapminder)
 
# Charge libraries:
library(ggplot2)
library(gganimate)
 
# Make a ggplot, but add frame=year: one image per year
ggplot(gapminder, aes(gdpPercap, lifeExp, size = pop, colour = country)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.7, show.legend = FALSE) +
  scale_colour_manual(values = country_colors) +
  scale_size(range = c(2, 12)) +
  scale_x_log10() +
  facet_wrap(~continent) +
  # Here comes the gganimate specific bits
  labs(title = 'Year: {frame_time}', x = 'GDP per capita', y = 'life expectancy') +
  transition_time(year) +
  ease_aes('linear')

# Save at gif:
anim_save("271-ggplot2-animated-gif-chart-with-gganimate2.gif")

Related chart types


Scatter
Heatmap
Correlogram
Bubble
Connected scatter
Density 2d



Contact

This document is a work by Yan Holtz. Any feedback is highly encouraged. You can fill an issue on Github, drop me a message on Twitter, or send an email pasting yan.holtz.data with gmail.com.

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