Hair and Fur Simulations

I have been working on hair simulations for an assignment recently.  In class we first looked at adding fur to geometry and manipulating its appearance.

 

We then learnt to add hair dynamics to the fur and created a grassy field which would interact with an object, which is pretty neat.

 

 
At the moment though, I have been practising creating custom hair styles for my character from last year.  So far I have been working in Maya and creating the hair strands manually using NURB curves.  Here's a couple of the variations, they both need some fine tuning to look more realistic still.

 

I like the shape of the second design, but unfortunately Maya doesn't seem to like it much as it crashes every time I try to go any further with it. :(