title: displaying a map in the background with matplotlib animation
body: <p>I want to show a map in the background when a vehicle is moving.  I am using matplotlib animate function.  The movement looks fine.  But I tried the following while loading the map.  The map is not loading.  Only a black patch is visible.  I tried to specify the zorder as well.  but nothing works.</p>
  
  <pre><code>ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, len(x11),interval=150,
                            blit=True, init_func=init, repeat=False)
  
  img = cbook.get_sample_data('..\\maps.png')
  image = plt.imread(img)
  plt.imshow(image)
  plt.show()
  </code></pre>