Besides painting our robot or doing good cable management, what else can we do to make an aesthetically pleasing robot?
There’s a few things here.
- De-clutter. This has to be intentional. What I mean by that is that you combine mechanisms in elegant ways. You don’t design beyond your capabilities (IIRC, you’re a 2nd-year team, I think you said), so you build something relatively simple but make it clean-looking.
- Camouflage. A well-placed side panel, solid colored, with nicely-done sponsor graphics does wonders for hiding things at least on first glance. Also think about if you can incorporate functionality into that panel somehow.
- BUMPERS. Take the time to make sure your bumper fabric is tight and secure (as in, do them around Presidents’ Day, not in the pits at your first event, and do them right). Not only does this make the overall robot look good, it prevents some possible bumper issues–and boosts you slightly on pick lists (hint, hint).*
- Pay attention to detail.
- Build a functional robot that is excellent at up to 3 things, one of which is driving, and is reliable. (The other 2 things are intaking and ejecting 1 type of game piece. >1 is optional.) If you do that, “ugly” takes care of itself. And if you really do it well, you can always cover it with a blue banner.
*Speaking of bumpers: Make sure the mounts are solid, the bumpers attach solidly, and all that sort of thing. I can think of two teams within 50 miles of me that I would NOT pick for playoffs, because they have had repeated bumper issues. I name no numbers.
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If you don’t mind me asking, what material do you make your sidepanels for sponsors out of? And where do you go to get the sponsor logos printed on them?
Let’s go with “any”, and “laminate paper and use double-sided tape”.
Any method can work. I’ve seen good side panels from smoked Lexan, thin fiberglass, corrugated plastic…
If you’re doing sponsor logos, stickers work; getting a vinyl print the size of the side panel with all the logos work. You could engrave them if you have a CNC but I don’t recommend that for now.
The point I’m trying to make here is to use your imagination a little bit.
For reference, here’s my team’s TBA link:
If you look at the robot in the picture, you can see a Lexan panel right above the bumpers with some red on it–that’s our sponsor panel for that side. I tried to find one of our 2018 robot which was even better (red with white labels) but that seems to have disappeared. This particular robot wasn’t particularly aesthetically pleasing, at least to my eye, but it did work. And the wire runs were fairly tidy. 2018 looked a lot messier when you got close, but the side panels and the arm tended to cover most of the mess.
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For side paneling, we used smoked Polycarb and white vinyl.
Additionally to what @EricH said, how the robot moves is important too. I robot that almost seems to “dance” through the field is going to look more elegant that one that jerks along.
It might seem like a non-answer, but well designed robots are typically beautiful because they have a beautiful method of solving the challenge on hand.
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Painting your robot does not make it aesthetically pleasing unless you can do a really good paint job. A bad paint job is guaranteed to make your robot look terrible. Most of the best looking robots follow the suggestions @EricH already made.
Painting also takes extra time so if your team has been pressed for time, they are better off spending the time on driver practice, as @UnofficialForth suggested.
I wouldn’t say we did a great job painting and it still turned out to look way better than raw aluminum.
To answer the OP’s question… pretty much just paint it black.
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It looks like your team did a decent paint job.
Runs in the paint and paint flaking off can look really bad**.
** Unless one is wanting the “rat rod” look.
The trick is not looking too closely at it 
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Having a team/robot logo/name/number milled or engraved somewhere is really nice
Drape the bot in blue banners.
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There is nothing worse than a painted robot with a rats nest for wiring.
Clean up and plan your wiring, not just for your bellypan, but for all electronics going on your mechanisms too. If you wire neatly, hide wiring in tubing, use ducting, zip ties, zip tie mounts, you’ll be in a good place.
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I agree with all above, but there’s one thing they left out - aesthetically pleasing design.
After you figure out what your robot’s major functional lines but before you start any building, back up and look at those lines as a skeleton - where the pieces are, how they move. Then, figure out what aesthetics on top of that work for you, and include that in the design. Follow that concept through with your choices of colors and textures. [Added: @JameCH95’s post below has many great examples of this!]
And a few minor tidbits:
Use fine sandpaper or ScotchBrite to texture all your metal surfaces, especially those which you aren’t going to cover up. Using a power sander, it’s a lot quicker than paint or powder coat, and works well with many aesthetic types.
Sometimes even simple things like adding rivets where they aren’t needed (but complete the pattern set by those which are) can make a noticeable difference.
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Real robots have curves!
The curve on the back of Feynman here was designed with a french curve. While subtle, it catches the eye.
Grace Hopper (our team’s name progenitor robot) was full of lovely curves on her side plates. They could have more easily been straight cuts. But lines are usually less sexy than curves.
Chuck had plenty of curves with offset and overlayed lightening patterns. It created a wonderful visual effect as he was viewed from different angles.
I specifically picked robots that 95 has made that were not painted, but painting is worth discussing along side this. We are huge fans of a quick shaker-can paintjob, just one coat, with a concise and planned color scheme. This takes good aesthetics to the next level.
Our 2017 robots, Wilbur and Orville, side-by-side show how aesthetics can be improved with a cohesive color scheme.
Instead of just painting everything one color (sorry #allblackeverything) picking different colors to highlight mechanisms or interesting shapes present in the design makes it pop. The unpainted practice robot looks more like a silver blob in comparison. However, you have to have those interesting shapes in your robot to start with!
To drive this point home, here is our 2018 competition and practice robots next to each other. The paint and cleaner wiring show off the robot well. While these robots have fewer interesting shapes than the others, we make the most of it by painting the chain maw red.
TL;DR - you should design in interesting shapes, even if it is a little harder, and make sure that these choices are cohesive. Coordinate your color scheme to highlight these interesting parts. Keep everything else clean. The clutter of wires, tubes, or poorly laid-out sponsors will detract from the robots aesthetic.
But don’t take my word for it. 118’s coordinated coloring has been wowing people since 2010. They contrast gold with white to highlight mechanisms and shapes on their robots to great effect.
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I’m sure the special effect smoke and great lighting had nothing to do with it either : P
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Consider using some of the virtual KoP from Inventables to get Lucite Light Guide acrylic. Toss it into an engraver and side light it with LED strips. Inexpensive and very cool looking. We did a joint project with one of our sponsors and used this as a front panel for our new pit carts.
TW
Ooooooh, interesting point, I would argue (for the sake of arguement) that:
Cool Looking =/= Aesthetically Pleasing
I’ve seen some cook looking robots with special under-glow an and other fancy tricks, but aren’t aesthetically pleasing. Either something is off feels off in the design, or it doesn’t seem to move “naturally” on the field. (Not to say a robot couldn’t be both, we are boarding some pretty subjective subjects)
Cool Looking - Something added in addition to the robot as an after thought
Aesthetically pleasing - Something that was thoughtfully incorporated in the design for a specific purpose along with the purposes of looking beautiful.
I’d love to hear other peoples thoughts on this idea!
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Well, I can’t agree with those definitions.
By your definitions, this is Aesthetically Pleasing but not Cool Looking. By mine, it is Cool Looking but not Aesthetically Pleasing.
We could be getting into a generational thing here…eh?
Modern automotive styling (I’ll pick on cars, because they’re the closest thing there is to robots in this regard) apparently is really cool looking. But dang, are they ugly!
Yes, I’m 58 years old.