gganimate - Values ovelaping during transition

Question

I want to create an animated barplot with the gganimate package. At the top of plot, I want to put the value of the coresponding year. In my dataset, year value is 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010. However, when the animatation is shown, I can see year value is overlap to each other as shown in the below picture:

This is my data file: test.csv

This is my code:

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)
library(readxl)
library(maps)
library(scales)
library(gganimate)

test_data <- read.csv("test.csv")
male_data <- test_data |> filter(sex_name == "Male") |> group_by(year) |>
  arrange(mean_age_death) |>
  slice_head(n = 10) |>
  mutate(rank_in_year = rank(mean_age_death, ties.method = "first"))|>
  ungroup()

male_faceted_plot <- male_data |>
  ggplot(aes(x = mean_age_death, y = factor(rank_in_year))) +
  geom_col(show.legend = FALSE) +
  facet_wrap(vars(year)) +
  scale_x_continuous(
    limits = c(-50,50),
    breaks = seq(0, 50, by = 10)
  ) +
  geom_text(
    hjust = "right",
    aes(label = country_name),
    x = -5,
    size = 5
  )

male_bar_race <- male_faceted_plot +
  # remove faceting
  facet_null() +
  # label the current year in the top corner of the plot
  geom_text(
    x = 50, y = 10,
    hjust = "top",
    aes(label = as.character(year)),
    size = 10
  ) +
  # define group structure for transitions
  aes(group = country_name) +
  # temporal transition - ensure integer value for labeling
  transition_states(year, transition_length = 1, state_length = 2, wrap = TRUE) 

# basic transition
animate(male_bar_race, nframes = 300, fps = 100, start_pause = 10, end_pause = 10)

How can I fix this? Thanks,

Answer 1

The parameters nframe (number of frames to render) and fps (frames per second) should be chosen carefully. Below, you will find my proposal.

male_bar_race <- male_faceted_plot +
  facet_null() +
  geom_text(
    x = 50, y = 10, hjust = "top",
    aes(label = year),
    size = 10
  ) +
  transition_states(year, transition_length = 1, state_length = 2, wrap = TRUE) 

nfr <- length(unique(male_data$year))
animate(male_bar_race, nframes = nfr, fps = 1)

Below is the animation with a smooth transition effect.

male_bar_race <- male_faceted_plot +
  facet_null() +
  geom_text(
    x = 50, y = 10, hjust = "top",
    aes(label=sprintf("%4.0f", year)),
    size = 10
  ) +
  transition_reveal(year)

animate(male_bar_race, nframes = 40, fps = 10)