Dave, thanks for the positive feedback.... The road/sidewalk in the small 2 city block scene:
The entire area is on a 1/2 inch sanded plywood base, with 1/8 inch tempered hardboard on top. The road was painted a dark grimy black latex paint, then I sprinkled extremely fine ground up granite dust out of a sifter while the paint was still wet, yes I applied the paint heavy...
Problems I ran into with this approach: I wish I had laid a small mask down the centerline to keep the granite dust off where I later painted the centerline... Second challenge, the dust coat is hard to apply uniform, as I wasn't completely satisfied, I ended up sanding it with fairly aggressive sandpaper and kept the shop vac running to even it out.... Actually this produced a pretty decent not totally even weathered worn texture for the roadway which is what I was looking for... After the center lines were down, I had my daughter apply different shades of gray/black pastels and spread them with a cheap disposable paint brush to blend it in and create the tire tracks..
Sidewalk on the right in the movie is 1/4 inch MDF, scribed for curbs and sidewalk. This is the long continuous sidewalk under the preformed concrete wall section... Painted Rust Oleum Camouflage "Sand" for base coat, weathered with diluted acrylics some darker, grayer and lighter than the sand color.... 3/4 inch stiff, round stippling or stencil brush is best for making quick work of the weathering
Sidewalks in front of the store fronts was much more of a project, but something I had been wanting to try for some time.... Base of sidewalk is 1/8 inch tempered hardboard, ontop of that I glued 1/16 Inch Fun Foam, sold at craft stores, Walmart .... It's very thin foam, over that we applied thin coating of hydrocal. Scribed the sidewalk lines before it completely cured, sanded lightly where necessary and then weathered with Woodland Scenics Concrete Dye, acrylics and pastels. I have seen this done on line, with the very thin coating on top of the foam base, you can come back and create real cracks in the sidewalk rather than draw them in.... It's a fair amount of effort to do this, I wouldn't do this everywhere, just places that are prominent up front locations. The other challenge with this is tried to build small dams to keep the plaster on the perimeter line of the buildings as I wanted the building sitting in the 1/16" of plaster coat. Would not have been so challenging if I had left the roadway and sidewalk straight, but I preferred the wide radius curve on on the road..... Apparently in my old age, I am getting away from building layout elements on straight and flat surfaces anymore, not realistic enough
Here are 2 photos that I cropped and had on my laptop....
