How to go from afro type hair to wet curly hair?

I read this book about curly hair once, and they had a section on getting hair like that. I believe that what the woman did was take some kind of tube (she used bits of a straw for small tight curls) and wrap some hair around each, repeating for her whole head, while it was wet, and letting it dry like that. She got the defined curls from the second picture but in the afro shape- the only way to go from the first's length to the second's length is to get a perm treatment, then curl it with rollers or a curling iron.