I highly doubt that this animation was done in any 3D program it is simply cleaver drawing. I think what you are really asking about turning a drawing into a 3d mesh would be better achieved in Zbrush rather than Maya. Google Zsketch that might give you some good ideas.

Depending on what you are going to use it for I suppose you could use a few simple cubes or planes with some fancy transparency effects to give the appearance of 3d that could probably recreate your little video there easily enough.