A Mount Maunganui cartoonist has won a $1000 classroom pack for his school as the intermediate division runner-up in the term three OfficeMax Colour Your Classroom competition.

The competition, which launched in 2014 and is supported by OfficeMax, asked students to channel their imagination and artistic prowess to design and illustrate their very own cartoon character.

Mount Maunganui Intermediate School student Rikaia Burford was announced as one of many winning students for his design in the competition which had more than 800 entries.

Rikaia's close second cartoon character is a brown and white tabby cat named Sparrow.

According to Rikaia, Sparrow lost his younger brother earlier in life, but is boastful, brave, arrogant and playful.

Rikaia's entry was pipped only by intermediate division winner Hunter Burnett (Mokoia Intermediate School), with other division winners including primary winner Ella Sarrier (Kaurihohore School) and secondary winner Bethany Hayes (James Hargest College).

The remaining two runners-up included Malak Ghoneimy (Ilam School) and Arnia Bradley (Verdon College), with all six winners and runners-up receiving a Sharpie 24-pack valued at $24.99 to add to their inventor's toolkit alongside the $1,000 classroom pack for their schools.

This year there was also a special merit prize awarded for an outstanding piece of creativity – this went to South New Brighton School student Eli Robertson, for his fantastic model of a ‘Kung Fu Kiwi'.

Colour Your Classroom judge and national account manager at Sharpie, Mark Norling, says this year's creations were some of the best he's ever seen.

'These cartoons show such creativity and some really beautiful ideas – in fact it would be amazing if all of these cartoon characters actually existed,” he says.

'The colours in these designs really popped and got the creative juices flowing. We even saw a full-scale model of one of the cartoons entered.”