#Easier Solution
You’ll have a much easier time of you simply possess a new character to put in place of the previous one.
Many due to changes in collision and animation complications, since it is the Character BP that stores the AnimBP, and the Anim Instance may or may not be updated / recreated for the new skeletal Mesh
Replicating the Character change is something I’ve already done in my own game,
though in my case I wanted it to be flash, you could make it more subtle if you wanted to!
Epic Wiki Link To Video
Rama
PS: all of this just my opinion, showing you an alternative