Electric Sheep development

I started designing what I imagined Rick Deckard looks like based on the very little description given in the novel and also began to thumbnail some of the scenes I had listed:

I began to develop one of the thumbnails depicting the character J.R. Isidore holding the handles of an empathy box into an illustration and tested some colours:

While the glowing effect of the handles looks cool, I can't help but feel as though this image is falling incredibly flat so far. I'm not feeling very motivated to continue with it.