Pixelising Champions and horrors from the Warhammer universes

What goes into taking your favourite champions from the Warhammer universes and shrinking them down into a pixelated form? Lead Concept Artist, Dom, and Concept Artist, Ohm, share their secrets in creating the character, enemy and weapon sprites of Warhammer Survivors.

Once the concepting phase is complete, which we focused on in our previous art blog, work can begin on the next steps of creating our host of playable champions, the merciless foes they will face and the weapons our champions will use to destroy them! There are three key aspects which the art team have worked tirelessly on to ensure that, whilst small in size, the game art immerses you into the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar universes.

Simplifying detailed miniatures

Ohm, Concept Artist

Pixelating existing Warhammer miniatures can be challenging when you’re trying to fit so much detail into a relatively small sprite.

As artists, our first point of call when working on characters is look at references and identify what is the most important elements or design language that represents a Champion, enemy, or weapon. For example, this could range from hair colour to distinct armour motifs and everything in between. We’re looking for anything that stands out!

Once key features have been identified, it’s our goal to keep these features identifiable when simplifying the overall design from a complicated model to a smaller sprite. The challenging part about this process is staying true to the character or enemies’ model as you squeeze as much detail as possible into only a few pixels!

Dom, Lead Concept Artist

There are times when we have lengthy discussions about how a certain character or enemy will be presented. We’re largely limited to one movement animation for each enemy, so when we’re creating the animation for something like the ‘Bomb Squig’, we try and communicate all the frantic movement and chaos of that unit into one animation loop, which is only a few frames long.

Nailing how Warhammer Survivors ‘feels’

A vital aspect of development is how the game ‘feels’. The connection you have to a game when performing a certain action can make or break your experience, and in Warhammer Survivors we’ve taken this very seriously.

Dom, Lead Concept Artist

Weapons are far more dependent on feel than champions or enemies. Each weapon goes through various stages to ensure that the ‘feeling’ is right. First is the design stage, where the designers will lay out their ideas for the weapon and communicate that with the rest of the team. Then there’s the concept stage, where those ideas start to take shape and can be seen in action. This then progresses to more advanced iterations until the final design feels satisfying to use. Many of our weapons have undergone a variety of changes over the lifetime of the development cycle from one round of feedback to the next.

Given we’re working in collaboration with poncle (creators of Vampire Survivors), there may be some similarities to the feeling of Vampire Survivors – it's part of the game’s DNA after all! That said, Warhammer Survivors is looking to expand upon what made the original survivaton such a breath of fresh air and we can’t wait for you to play it for yourself!

It’s a balance. We’re trying to stay true to the core experience of the Vampire Survivors gameplay while also representing both Warhammer universes. We’re bringing in new weapons and enemy variants for experienced Vampire Survivors players while also faithfully representing the champions and lore of Warhammer along the way. Warhammer has a lot of aspects that are grim, dark and serious but also loads of space for irreverent humour and fantasy.

While it’s no easy feat to give each of these elements its own space to blossom, we think we’ve done a good job in making it a fun and compelling experience for survivaton veterans, Warhammer fans, and new players who have never faced the swarms before!

Our favourite factions

Ohm, Concept Artist

It’s amazing to work on the first Warhammer video game that includes both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar. There’s a plethora of incredible champions, weapons, and enemy factions to tap into.

I love working on the Skaven from Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Their models have so much personality about them. Trying to fit all of that into a small sprite was a challenge, but it’s been very rewarding to see it all come together. My favourite sprite would be the mighty Rat Ogor. I love the way they stomp around the battlefield and impose themselves amongst the Skaven infantry.

Dom, Lead Concept Artist

I’m a long time Tyranid collector, so the Tyranid enemies and stages have been a real treat for me. I’ve finally been able to draw on all those years of accumulated Warhammer trivia and put it to good use. If you want someone who can tell you about the difference between a Tyranid Capillary Tower and a Hive Node, I'm happy to help. I’m also really glad we’ve been able to include fan favourite champions like Sebastian Yarrick and Gotrek, as well as some that are a bit out of left field, like Knight-Commander Pask.

What comes next? 

Now the champions, enemies, and weapons are created, what’s next? Well, they need somewhere to fight, of course! The next art blog will focus on the hallowed warzones of Warhammer Survivors. 

Thanks for reading! 

Wishlist Warhammer Survivors now! 👇

ICYMI: We also just revealed the release date for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2! 🙌

It will be available on Steam from the 14th of October 2026. Wishlist now!