From Liège to Laravel: The Artisan of the Day Is Adrien Leloup.
Adrien “voidgraphics” Leloup, a full‑stack developer based in Liège, Belgium, has dedicated years to honing tools and building Laravel-driven sites.
Over nine years at Whitecube, a boutique agency of seven, he's shipped over 100 unique web projects, from simple sites to sprawling enterprise resource planning systems, powered by Laravel and deployed via Forge. He says, “We kind of feel like superheroes because we are just able to be so productive with a small team.”
Meanwhile, alongside his friend Jonathan, Adrien co‑organizes the PHP×Brussels meetups, a reboot of the local PHP scene after COVID stagnation. While they’re still starting out, he hopes to differentiate these events, which are held every two months, by adding a good dose of fun. This is why they alternate between educational events (with two speakers) and fun events (drinks and quizzes, pétanque, or Mario Kart tournaments, to name a few): to differentiate the meetups and help build stronger bonds between attendees.
Code and Community: Dual Platforms for Impact
When he's not busy shipping products, you can find Adrien building tools, too. One of his biggest current projects is Hiker.dev, a Laravel-powered tool his team has been developing to transform how they approach projects internally.
Right now, it’s in private early access so they can gather feedback in a controlled way before open sourcing it. Developers interested in testing it can apply for early access, and as a bonus, Adrien sends each participant a physical holographic access card. Sometimes, he even reserves a card in person for when paths cross at a conference.
This playful but thoughtful touch can also be found in another of Adrien’s creations, ignition‑cat, a cheeky Laravel Ignition plugin that delivers a random cat gif when debugging, because in his words, “you need a cat gif” at 4:32 in the morning. We couldn’t agree more.
His personal blog dives deeper into shader magic: teaching how to use fragment shaders in Laravel projects via Vite. His July 2024 post, Using Shaders with Laravel and Vite, breaks down the steps to integrate shaders into your build process, turning plain UIs into captivating visuals.
On platforms like Bluesky, Adrien shares some of his insights: exploring middleware for Laravel queues like WithoutOverlapping, experimenting with Livewire](https://livewire.laravel.com), and troubleshooting dev tools on macOS.
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