I have been trying to figure out how I can get that flat hair in the reference, but getting that angle is like impossible to accomplish here. I went though the whole tutorial on CG Cookie’s long hair, and he said to move the roots, even that doesn’t work, it just distorts all along the hair. I am using the wave option for the type of hair so I can adjust the flatness.
I would recommend this:
For the simple straight hairs in the front, use a vertex group on the scalp itself and make a system with ~4 segments, maybe 800 parnets, and ~10-20 children.
For the long crazy ones, use individual planes (separate objects each) located just inside the scalp. Create a new hair system, segements ~ 10, with wave or curl, maybe 5 parents and ~30 children. Comb one of these plane systems, and then duplicate it in object mode, and recomb it. It’s a little more tedious, but you get 100% control on rotation. You can also scale/rotate the plane (a little bit) in object mode. You need ~20 total of these, and you might want to parent them all to a master empty to keep your outliner clean.
