Update!
My friend who is a music composer replied. He likes the idea of the music video. He is watching the 22 minute production for ideas for a song. He will send me a rough of the song when he has something together.
My prop master is working on silver demon hunter dolls. He will also work on cyborg dolls.
I am still scripting IC3 and layering a subplot to IC4 - Earth Rebooted into IC3. It may take time to start on e-books. But, I will look for my original hand written manuscripts for I, Creator and its' prequel Future Pioneers. Having the manuscripts should make writing e-books easier.
It's great to hear that you are expanding the "IC Universe" But are you looking at these things as possible ways to make money?
Because if you don't have a fanbase or an audience who is demanding these products I don't see how they're going to help you raise equity for your production.
If you can get those guys to do all that for free, then that's great, but I certainly wouldn't put any money in producing music videos or action figures if there is no demand for them.
You said that you have invested $20,000 of your own money towards the 22-minute production, in this case I would personally advise you to not invest another dollar in it, not because I think that the production is worthless or anything, I wouldn't know enough about it to form a personal opinion, but simply because there is no money to be made with short films.
Even though you are doing this as a pilot, but because there is no TV channel or production company involved, it's technically a short film and you can't make any money with short films.
I understand that it is a passion project, but I would suggest that in the future you learn how to budget things more tightly.
Even though I haven't seen the 22 minute version, but from the material I've seen there isn't anything on the screen that would require a $20,000 budget.
I understand that the costs add up as you go along, but with a $20,000 budget and a tight schedule and budget you could have done so much more.
If you aren't going to make any money with it, you can't expect others to make money either.
A good DP I would invest in, all the others, actors and crew should be working for basically gas money.
I don't know who you have been paying and how much, but there are plenty of hungry actors and aspiring filmmakers who would love the chance to work on a sci-fi production like yours, even for very little money.
And before I get a bunch of guys grabbing my throat for saying this, I don't suggest that you don't pay professional crew members decent wages, I'm just saying that when you are doing a very low budget independent production that you are paying out of pocket, you HAVE TO get people working for free or for very little money, and there are plenty of people who will.
In the past you have talked about how you are going to hire TWO professional stunt coordinators to work on this production, I would suggest against it.
It will not bring any additional value to the production and it will probably end up costing you a whole lot of money.
My opinion on what you should do is to finish this current production, whatever you have in the can you use that, and if you have to shoot some more material you should do that with basically no extra money.
You can then use that as your "reel". You won't make any money with it but you can use that to go on to bigger things.
You have talked earlier on how you would like to produce content for SYFY. Look at their programming and see what you could do. A show is out of the question at this point.
They just announced their new line-up/pilots/projects in development, every single one of them is run by a veteran showrunner, written by veteran writers and starring veteran tv-actors, either that or they are some cheap reality show.
One thing that they still do buy from independent production companies is movies, mainly horror and creature feature.
Look at the writers who are writing these movies, contact them and show them your 22 minute production and tell them you want to make a creature feature movie, you won't pay him/her any money at this point, but if they trust you they will work with you.
Come up with a bunch of titles and loglines and present them to the honchos at SYFY. You should be able to get a meeting with the help of that writer who has worked with them before.
If they bite at anything, then good, if not ask them what they are buying at the moment, then go prepare another slate of titles and loglines based on their notes.
If all else fails you can take the $10,000 you were going to spend on IC2 and invest that into a microbudget feature, and you can produce the creature feature/horror/whatever movie on your own, or if you really wanna risk it you come up with a movie idea with the writer from SYFY and you put the ten grand towards producing a trailer for the project or an opening scene, one or two day shoot with professional DP and RED cameras and the whole deal, that should warrant you another meeting at SYFY at least.
