I recently wrote a blog post that introduced the concept of the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) format and how you might be able to use that in an Ionic application. You can read more about that here but the basic idea is that SVGs are vector graphics (so they can be scaled to any size without losing quality) and they are defined using an XML format so they work well with the web. Since an SVG (and even parts of an SVG) can be treated as individual DOM elements, it makes it very easy to manipulate and animate with Javascript and CSS.
This video tutorial walks through the whole process of first creating an SVG, and then adding it to an Ionic application and animating it.