Retopo of a dragon sculpt (beginner)

Vanille

I made a dragon sculpt and I am now trying to make a retopo of it, intended for animation down the line. However while I made a lot of sculpts and still models, I do not have a lot of experience with medium poly character models. I of course watched a lot of tutorials, but I have a lot of questions and desire for feedback so I think it's time to try posting here.

First of all the sculpt 



And the retopo


Obviously these 2 images do no show everything so I made an imgur album to avoid bloating this post 
https://imgur.com/a/wVZgBFB (feel free to ask for more pics if needed).

While I have the basic closed shape I'm pretty sure there's still a lot of room for improvement and details that need to be sorted. Some specific questions would be:

1. for places that do not need to deform but have a high density, is it okay to reduce it in the way I do in the second last pic in the imgur link?

2. Should the places that deform get more topology then there is right now?

3. what is an acceptable poly count for a character like this (game context)? Current count is around 6K faces, with the less topology attempt in the last pic it's around 5.5K.

Obviously any other critique and general observations are also appreciated! I probably need it.

kanga

Hi. Nice dragon.

Stepping back from the topo for a bit. The dragon anatomy doesn't look right. Check out dog anatomy if you cant find enough dragon reference. The legs and toes need more attention.

The topology for animation could be alot better for joint deformation.

Polycount is always a weird question but putting polys where you need them isnt. You should be able to alter the frequency of your mesh to suit the detail it has to support One technique is hooks.

Have fun!