Is Blender a good solution for bringing hand drawn illustrations to 3D life? I'm completely unfamiliar with animation, but I'm considering learning blender for use in producing educational (physics) content as it was suggested to me that it can be used to do what Henry Reich does in the following MinutePhysics video from 00:53-00:58:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmNXKqeUtJM

Would "bringing hand drawn animation to 3D life" in the particular way illustrated by this video be relatively straightforward in Blender?  Is Blender a good solution for attempting to recreate that sort of thing?
You certainly could. Import your "hand drawn" textures on to planes. Then just position them in 3D space. Animate the camera moving around and your effect is about done. Depending on how much movement you may want to add a Track To Constraint to each of your planes, set the constraint to the camera. That will make the planes always point at the camera.