First off, I have been lurking on this forums for quite a while as unregistered, but this contest made me sign up and build something.
Somewhere in the replies I read someone wondering if a Hot Air Balloon was being built. So... Challenge Accepted!

I started in Stud.io 2 where I found out that alignment of axles is quite annoying.

Also the lack of strength and parts made me ditch the way of the Axle.
Next step was using the axles and connectors as a guide to build it with liftarms.

This didn't work either, to flimsy and the smaller end didn't come close to a usable width. 10,5 studs instead of 10 or 11.
I did made it from Lego, but no pictures of the true building process.
To get both ends together I decided the balloon had to be a ball shape, the easy way out.

This worked better, but it was still flimsy and not that nice on the eyes.
On to strengthening the thing.

This worked for me. Sturdy, round and nice.
Then upon building it, the lack of parts came around again. So instead of 8 ribs I had to settle for 4 ribs.
This also made it easier to put in the basket.

In Studio 2 it looked quite nice putting both of them together:

 

Still not satisfied, because that happens when being a perfectionist, I tried to design different rings for the ribs to connect to.

All where to big, so I went for something smaller (and much more complicated)

And no, the colours are not final, but easier to see the difference of the parts.
As this wasn't working for me either, since 8 ribs was a few to many, I searched for a way of getting a 6 way connector.

Small, simple and quite usable. All that was needed now was a way of creating sturdy ribs and enough parts to do 6 of them.
I started again in Studio 2 and got to a point where I thought it would be better to continue with real bricks.

And as said before, no reallife progress pics.
But it ended as quite a large Hot Air Balloon with many reinforcements...
Without those, it would collapse instantly. The weight made it hard to assemble, but it worked well enough.

As to functions:
The tiny door in the basket can be opened and closed.

Final pics of the finished Balloon

 

Thanks for looking/reading.

Epicentre / Stefan

 

 

 

Wow! And... Hoorray! I'm not the only zeppelin/baloon creator in this contest! Finally, at least someone remembered, that aircraft- is not only plane or copter!

Thanks! Totally agree with you.
On the other hand, some planes/copters in the contest do look awesome.
And we were not the only ones thinking outside of the box, like the aston martin or the propeller launcher.