Demo for GIF animations

basic_animation.py

import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import animation

# First set up the figure, the axis, and the plot element we want to animate
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, xlim=(0, 2), ylim=(-2, 2))
line, = ax.plot([], [], lw=2)

# initialization function: plot the background of each frame
def init():
    line.set_data([], [])
    return line,

# animation function.  This is called sequentially
def animate(i):
    x = np.linspace(0, 2, 1000)
    y = np.sin(2 * np.pi * (x - 0.01 * i))
    line.set_data(x, y)
    return line,

# call the animator.  blit=True means only re-draw the parts that have changed.
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, init_func=init,
                               frames=100, interval=20, blit=True)

# this is how you save your animation to file:
#anim.save('animation.gif', writer='imagemagick_file', fps=30)
anim.save('animation.gif', writer='imagemagick', fps=30)

plt.show()