How many Tris are you aiming for? I can see a couple places where you could rework the topology. The nose and lips might not need to be so defined if you are worried of going over your limit. The lips especially you could probably fake to look 3d with texture. The hair should be ok I think, you might be able to even use a bit more polys to make his head look less blocky. Turn the lighting off so he is entirely black and work with the silhouette to make areas like the top of his head look smoother. I'll try and do a paint over if I have some free time later. As for his coat, if you don't plan him ever removing his coat you can probably just merge his coat close to the front you can fake it with texture probably as well. Any geometry you will never see you don't really need to have on it unless its necessary for some other reason.
I use a tool in maya called unfold which can be located in the UV editor's file menu. If you do a top down planar map of your characters hair, select some areas to cut where you are worried about deforming and click unfold it should lay things out nicely for it with out much texture distortion. Automatic mapping is nice for little texture distortion but you have to do ALOT of stitch work usually.
If you aren't sure what I'm talking about i can describe things a bit more indepth also or if you have any other questions. This looks great so far for your first model, I hope this was helpful
