We present an automatic method that allows to retarget poses from a source to a target character by transferring the shape of the target character onto the desired pose of the source character. By considering shape instead of pose transfer our method allows to better preserve the contextual meaning of the source pose, typically contacts between body parts, than pose-based strategies. To this end, we propose an optimization-based method to deform the source shape in the desired pose using three main energy functions: similarity to the target shape, body part volume preservation, and collision management to preserve existing contacts and prevent penetrations. The results show that our method allows to retarget complex poses with several contacts to different morphologies, and is even able to create new contacts when morphology changes require them, such as increases in body size. To demonstrate the robustness of our approach to different types of shapes, we successfully apply it to basic and dressed human characters as well as wild animal models, without the need to adjust parameters. 1. Introduction 1 Animation studios have stored terabytes of animation files 2 applied on various 3D characters with meticulous association 3 between skeletal motion and 3D shape, created manually by 4 skilled artists who designed rigged models and corresponding 5 skeletal motions. Retargeting these existing skeletal motions 6 to new characters automatically is a long-standing problem in 7 computer animation [20] that remains challenging, especially 8 when the animation contains close interactions and contacts.