Of course you can design with minimal support material and use clever tricks to reduce the need for it but you are going to have to be a 3D graphics expert and an expert in 3D printing first if you wish to use those skills.
This means that companies who have hot designers can make the most efficient use of such 3D printing techniques. One such is http://www.myrobotnation.com/ which has an online HTML5 web tool which lets you build a simple robot and colour it in 3D. Then if you pay a fee, they will print it in full colour and send it to you. For small models this is fairly cheap, about £12 for a 50mm high one, but for 150mm high, because of the much higher manufacturing costs and volume of printing required, the price shoots up to £120! I strongly suspect the parts you choose from are hollow, to keep the volume and therefore amount of material used to a minimum. Careful design keeps the cost low and online design software means anyone can make a jazzy robot and those who wish to do so can print it.
You can save designs but only for 2 weeks, but this might be enough time to organise a robot competition and have the winners manufactured and posted from the companies manufacturing base in America... Perhaps some English Literature Sci Fi projects could get a lot more interesting, 3d, and real!
For those who know about the cheap abs meltign machines such as the Thing o Matic, they are great for those who have unlimited time or technicians. Perhaps another two generations of development (18 months time!) and well see truly excellent high resolution results at low cost on a school bench. Till then it s going to have to be 3D printing bureaus for making those wonderful full colour robots!
