Looks good, I really like the face.
As for the Normal Mapping thing, I think it might have something to do with the fact that normal mapping is made for realtime rendering, but I haven't played around with it myself yet, so I don't know if it renders the same way when you render normally.
The butt looks like it needs an edgeloop or two to make a crease under the cheeks, but it would be easier to tell if you post a wire.
And of course it can be used for animation, it just takes a little longer to render If you plan on animating him, it might be a good idea to keep the lowpoly and use that for the animating and then attack the smoothed mesh once the animation is all set up and ready to render
Liter is French for 'Gimme some ****ing cola before I break vous ****ing lips!"