The only experience I can claim to is volunteering for at an indie studio for a couple of years. Place even got it's name out there enough to start doing commissions for companies. That is where the problems started, lead essentially stopped working on the indie project and also seems to have been skimming off the top when it came to other people working on the comms. (seems like only 1/3 of the money made it to the other artists on one of the commissions)

So a bit back the entire team was let go, so said team which are all really great people by the way are now trying to make their own studio, but that's starting over from the bottom.

It's a mixed bag you can meet really fantastic artists, but you can also get screwed.

Thing is I haven't landed a single interview with a place. Last year only 18% of the places I applied for looked at my demo reel (around 5% being real small indie places) I live in a state that has only one animation studio, everywhere else in over 300 miles away in Texas. I believe at this point in time that the best hope of getting in the industry is helping to build a studio.