Curved block of text with perspective

[marlene]

I'm attaching a scan of a drawing my client faxed to me. They want this special effect of the text filling in a white path that curves and gets skinnier. (The curved lines are just guides drawn by the client -- they don't actually want lines under the text.)

I have spent over 6 hours trying to do this in Illustrator, but cannot get the precise effect they want. They don't want the text to get real small on the right, and I don't see how to prevent it. They want the beginning of each line to roughly follow the corner of the card (this is supposed to be a postcard), although not so close to the edge. When I try to do this in Illustrator, the beginning of each line ends up with different sized text, since it falls in a different part of the "envelope."

I am at my wits' end. If anyone 1) knows a way to do this that doesn't require a degree in physics or 2) wants to do the job (I'll subcontract), please let me know.

(By the way, the text shown is not the actual text being used. After I'd spent almost 5 hours on the job, they rewrote all the text. There will be four of these postcards, each with different text.)

mxh