It might happen that you will need a animated graph of any kind. For purposes of plotting demographic data and changes through the years, Google Maps and plotting maps, merging and converting jpg files into a animated gif, sure will give a nice visualization effect.

Here is a sample of changes over the time period of three years on some dataset of my home town and graph can tell little bit more as numbers

So besides plotting visualizations based on geographical data, additional plots available in any of R packages can be visualized in a similar way.

Playing and goofing around, I created a sample dataset:

# dataset
d <- data.frame(val=c(2,3,4,3,4,3,4,3,2,1), 
                year=c(2015,2016,2017,2015,2016,2015,2015,2016,2017,2015)
                )

Once that, is created, a function would do the trick:

setwd("C:/DataTK")
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)

plot.bar.2 <- function(df_plot, xvar, yvar, fill)
{
  require(ggplot2)
  require(dplyr)
  attach(df_plot)
  #number of steps - based on values in X-axis
  x_unique <- unique(df_plot$xvar)   #xvar = year
  nof_steps <- as.integer(length(df_plot$x_unique))

  for (i in 1:nof_steps) 
  {
    x <- as.integer(x_unique[i])
    
    d1 <- df_plot %>%
          arrange(xvar) %>%
          filter(xvar<=x) %>%
          mutate(new_val = val) %>%
          select(xvar, new_val)
    
    d2 <- df_plot %>%
          arrange(xvar) %>%
          filter(xvar>x) %>%
          mutate(new_val = 0) %>%
          select(xvar,new_val)
    
    dfinal <- union_all(d1, d2)
    dfinal <- data.frame(dfinal)
    colnames(dfinal)[1] <- "x"
    colnames(dfinal)[2] <- "y"
    
    name <- paste('barplot00',i,'.png',sep="")
    png(name)
    ggplot(data=dfinal, aes(x=x, y=y, fill=x)) + geom_bar(stat="identity") + 
        guides(fill=FALSE)
    dev.off()
    rm(d1,d2,x,dfinal) 
  }

  system("magick -delay 150 -loop 0 *.png GeomBar_plot.gif")
  file.remove(list.files(pattern=".png"))
  rm(x_unique, nof_steps)   
  detach(df_plot)
}

plot.bar.2(d, d$year, d$val, d$year)

A bit more “interactive” or animated graph is created.

In comparison to static graph:

In addition to R code, the ImageMagic program needs to be installed on your machine, as well. Also the speed, quality and many other parameters can be set, when creating animated gif.

Animated gif can be also included into your SSRS report, your Sharepoint site or any other site – like my blog and it will stay interactive. In Power BI, importing animated gif as a picture, unfortunately will not work.

As always, code is available at GitHub.

Happy R-coding!