I've never experienced something like this in a hard way. I think art community (cg in general that is what I'm more close to) is one of the best communities I've ever seen.
For example at school we are five groups, and every group need to make a game. Sometimes you can notice people being competitive (I'm one of them) but is more something like "oh, see what they did, looks awesome, let's make us something more awesome" xD.
And always try to help every one and ask how they do the things (unless the person itself is unfriendly to me so then I just think .. f** you -.-.
What I've noticed is that a lot of people nowadays says that what you're doing is good or bad without a constructive feedback, just to say it, but in my opinion this is the worst thing you can say to someone that is trying hard and that spent a lot of time in a project, I mean if you're my brother, that is 15 years old and doesn't care about anything or someone that "doesn't know anything about art" or doesnยดt care it's ok, but I've noticed this behaviour with some students and what is worst, with a lot of teachers...
This is something that stucks the artist itself and doesn't help at all. I'm not saying that a: "hey, that's cool" isn't welcome but uhmmm... I think you can understand me.
But really, I think art community as I've seen it's awesome. You can always meet an asshole but this happens everywhere, just don't care about them and keep in touch and be nice with people that deserve it!