Begin creating a rogue's gallery by first examining your heroine. Write down her personality traits. Create a foil, or character who contrasts with her personality. A good villainous foil is often characterized by the ability to do everything slightly better than the hero. The hero has to go to great lengths to defeat the villainous foil. Start making a villainous foil by writing down characteristic traits that are opposite to the heroine. The villainous foil can embody one, or several, of these traits. These opposite personality traits will continuously bring hero and villain into conflict.
Attach physical qualities to the rogues that are stereotypically bad. Do this to play off the readers' perceptions of what is good and bad. These qualities leave no doubt in their minds about who the villain is. Sharp fangs, a hunched posture and dark clothing are some examples of physical qualities generally perceived as evil.
Make the rogues commit acts of evil. This is the most obvious way to create rogues, but it is the inward personality traits and the outward physical qualities that promote the possibility of such acts. Have the rogue threaten to kidnap someone or do harm to others, and then have them make good on their threats. This will bring the heroine into action to stop them.
Play off the individual rogue's desires to create conflict for the hero. Design the rogues to be evil or in opposition to the hero, but make each one individual in their desires. Have specific goals in mind for each villain, so that how they go about things are based upon their personal outlook on life and their goals. This will allow rogues in the gallery to stand out from the others. Give the villains unique abilities that will further set them apart from each other.
Draw stick figures to begin designing your rogues. Use ovals for the head, ribcageand pelvis. Connect these body parts with a centerline that runs through them to represent the spine. Make circles on the top corners of the ribcage oval to represent shoulders. Draw lines off of the shoulder circles to represent arms. Project lines from the sides of the pelvis to represent legs. Make the figure three-dimensional by sketching cylinders over the limbs and rectangular solids over the oval shapes.
Start adding personality to your rogues by drawing in some of the physical aspects discussed in the first section. Place fangs in the mouth by drawing long, stretched out triangles. Alter the posture of the figure by bending the centerline so that the character is hunched over. Draw clothing over the figure, and darken it by turning the pencil on its side and shading to make it black. Make a foil villain more physically imposing than the hero by drawing a larger body frame and giving the character bigger muscles. Female rogues can be drawn as alluring, but with wicked smiles and eyebrows that slant inward that attest to their evil. Draw an evil smile with open lips that reveal the teeth clenched. Make lines that slant inward above the eyes to make eyebrows.
Give the characters some weapons, like swords or guns if necessary. An armed rogue against a weaponless hero automatically shows the villain's willingness to fight dirty. Swords can be drawn by making a centerline and drawing a triangle from the top that can run down to a handle. Create guns by sketching out an L-shape, and then looking at gun reference when drawing in details.