The private collection of Ron Miller

The second-highest grossing director of all time, Canadian filmmaker James Cameron is world renowned for his commitment to advancing the cinematic arts through experimental visual effects and groundbreaking technological achievement. From The Terminator (1984) to Aliens (1986) to Titanic (1997) to Avatar (2009), Camಞeron has remade the world of filmic innovation time and time ag🥀ain.

From the personal collection of American sc🐲ience fiction author and illustrator, R🔴on Miller, the present lot is an archival work from the pre-production period of a project Cameron never brought to the screen—a story of the first exploration of Mars by the people of Earth. In ‘Base Habitat,’ a construction-yellow rover leaves tracks in the rocky landscape as it approaches a globular module structure—the ‘Base Habitat’ itself—rising majestically atop a red sand dune in the Martian desert and set against a glowing orange sky.

Along with his wife and professional collaborator Judith—Ron handled the illustration🌠s while Judith built the models—Miler joined Cameron’s Mars project 🍰before there was even a script, just a series of concepts. In these early stages, Cameron contracted the Miller’s to produce the following designs: a space station, space shuttles, an Earth-to-Mars spacecraft, a Martian habitat, and a Mars rover.

The present lot brings several of Cameron’s preliminary concepts to life in one image while also being highly demonstrative of Miller’s signature style of illustration that made him an established figure in the behind-the-scenes world of sci-fi filmmaking at the end of the 20^th century.